The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE recommends an impressive impersonation of Bob Dylan
Best of 2024: Books
In a year press disinformation, ALEX HALL picks out the best and worst
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Here, Vermiglio, William Tell and Wolf Man
New releases from Thorpe and Morrison, Daria Kulesh, and Will Finn and Rosie Calvert
RINA ARYA confronts the brutal operation of Francis Bacon’s approach to portraiture
Emphasising his continuous engagement in labour movement struggles, ALISTAIR FINDLAY salutes John Foster’s contribution as activist, strategist, intellectual and defender of the Morning Star
ANDY MIAH advocates the use of AI to assist people by expanding access to global literature and culture
EWAN KOTZ relishes a veteran Glasgow band that have lost none of their verve for live performance
IT has been a tough year for very basic assumptions about common humanity and the most fundamental of shared values. The scales have again been forced from our eyes once more as the most powerful nations in the world essentially only endorse power even in extremis.
Most MPs elected this year remain silent on the Israeli genocide of Palestinians, while figures like David Lammy and Keir Starmer appear to think it doesn’t count as a crime. It’s been a tough year for anyone bearing witness to body parts strewn across phone screens, tougher more to observe Israeli soldiers prancing in stolen clothing and stitching children’s toys to D9 bulldozers.
One key outcome of 2024 has been the exposure of the “might is right” system and the nature of zionism. If there is one thing that Hamas achieved it was this exposure of what zionism really is, and which is why amid the carnage it makes sense to get better informed about who did what and why.
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A landmark work of gay ethnography, an avant-garde fusion of folk and modernity, and a chance comment in a great interview
ANGUS REID applauds the inventive stagecraft with which the Lyceum serve up Stevenson’s classic, but misses the deeper themes
ANGUS REID time-travels back to times when Gay Liberation was radical and allied seamlessly to an anti-racist, anti-establishment movement
ANGUS REID speaks to historian Siphokazi Magadla about the women who fought apartheid and their impact on South African society
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ALEX HALL is impressed by the scholarship of the book but disappointed by its failure to explore in significant depth the ‘why’ of the Gaza predicament
ALEX HALL recommends a meticulous and fascinating academic account of the development of Lebanon’s ‘Party of God’
RUTH AYLETT recommends a remarkable collection that is collective in its grief and serious in its demand for solidarity
GAVIN O’TOOLE surveys the literature that provides compelling analysis of resistance to neoliberal hegemony