MARIA DUARTE recommends a remarkable study of the friendship between a Palestinian and a Pakistani, broken by a hostile state
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London’s blighted skyline
Despite its anti-socialist bias, JOHN GREEN recommends a new survey of British architecture that seeks to educate and provoke
MISUNDERSTOOD BRUTALIST GENIUS: Gordon Benson and Alan Forsyth of the London Borough of Camden's Architects' Department, 1974-6, Grade II listed in 2010 - ‘Camden have arguably succeeded in building some of the highest quality council accommodation in the country'
[George Rex/CC]
MATTHEW HAWKINS rakes through un-fancy words and flair-free summaries to find who and what might be flamboyant
PETER MASON is exhilarated by an exciting, well-considered and historically minded tribute to the great Trinidadian instrument
Reducing historical lives to ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles, we lose the nuance of those lives and a clearer understanding of past societies, suggests CLAIRE ISABELLA GILMOUR
CHRIS SEARLE relishes the genius of pianist Alexander Hawkins, his many ensembles, and his new album
A Short History of British Architecture - from Stonehenge to the Shard
Simon Jenkins, Penguin Viking, £26.99
SIMON JENKINS is one of our last remaining journalists of the old school – he writes with passion as well as compassion, perceptively and rationally, in a style that combines articulateness, erudition and accessibility.
Jenkins has been deputy chair of English Heritage and today is chair of the National Trust. Although he is a conservative with a small “c” and despises many of those with a capital “C”, his commentaries are always provocative and apposite. This, his latest book, will enlighten and entertain, as it will undoubtedly annoy some of our more extremist architectural iconoclasts.
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The selection, analysis and interpretation of historical ‘facts’ always takes place within a paradigm, a model of how the world works. That’s why history is always a battleground, declares the Marx Memorial Library
ALAN McGUIRE welcomes a biography of the French semiologist and philosopher