GORDON PARSONS recommends an entertaining account of the years between Germany’s defeat in WWI and Hitler’s seizure of power
If London were to elect its own poet laureate then it would be hard to look past East End wordsmith Tim Wells and not just because he’s a big fella.
Wells’s carefully honed verse can appear bold, brash and lewd to the uninitiated or un-listening. But watch the man in action, listen with a pint in your hand or delve into his new collection Everything Crash and you realise that for every bog door joke there is a piece of classical inspiration. And for every mention of a reggae floor-filler there is a crafted observation so acute that you want to steal it as your own.
Judge by appearances and you’ll miss the button-down shirt-attired suedehead verbalist deliver lines in Yiddish, Sylheti, Cockney and Jamaican patois.
Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners co-founder MIKE JACKSON talks to Matt Kerr about the enduring power of Pride, protest and trade unionism
Two inspring books — that’s your New Year’s musing from me on January 2 2026
RUTH AYLETT reviews two collections of outright political poetry



