MARIA DUARTE recommends a remarkable study of the friendship between a Palestinian and a Pakistani, broken by a hostile state
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FIONA O’CONNOR examines a new book by Labour’s media-savvy MP and new Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls
POACHER TURNED GAMEKEEPER? Jess Phillips MP holds the Sue Gray report up as she responds to a statement by Prime Minister Boris Johnson to MPs in the House of Commons, January 31, 2022
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
Let’s Be Honest: Truth, Lies and Politics
Jess Phillips, Simon & Schuster, £15.95
LET’S Be Honest, the title already of Jess Phillips’s latest autobiography – her fourth – raises the stakes for her going forwards. That’s Jess Phillips, outspoken MP for Birmingham Yardley, now Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls; potentially one of the most important voices in government for British women today.
In this most recent chronicle of her parliamentary career Phillips writes from her personal experience in opposition under the rule of Rishi Sunak’s dying government. It’s a notes-from-the-battlefield attempt to cut through “the bullshit” of Tory populist tactics: distraction, division, distraction, more division, while the country went belly up.
The book has been criticised by some reviewers for missing its sell-by date, arriving just as the country freed itself from Tory rule.
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