WILL STONE samples the 20th anniversary atmosphere of this eclectic end-of-season indie festival
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Africa in its own right
ROGER McKENZIE welcomes an important contribution to the history of Africa, telling the story in its own right rather than in relation to Europeans
IN SEARCH OF RELEVANCE: Rafiki Theatre (Uganda) production Beyond the Nomads
[Rafiki Theatre/Creative Commons]
Comics are not just superheroes and spandex – it can be public art, telling public stories, suggests HARRIET EARLE
The bard serenades the Diggers of Wigan and their festive followers
ALEXEI SAYLE speaks to Angus Reid about a lifetime of protest, how to hone political art – and what to do now
ANDY HEDGECOCK, JAMES WALSH, LEO BOIX and MARIA DUARTE review Just An Illusion, Everybody Digs Bill Evans, Blue Film, Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger, and Runner
MARIA DUARTE recommends a nerve-wracking reconstruction of the 72 hours before the Normandy landings
The African Revolution: A History of the Long Nineteenth Century
Richard Reid, Princeton University Press, £30
IF YOU have a preference for a well researched book about a much neglected period of African history before the “scramble for Africa” written by a white academic, then The African Revolution: A History of the Long Nineteenth Century is for you.
The author, Richard Reid, is a professor of African history at the University of Oxford and a fellow at the university’s St Cross graduate college.
He is clearly extremely learned on African history, having written numerous books on modern Africa. His latest work innovatively uses a stretch of road in east Africa in what is now known as Tanzania to help him to paint a picture of events leading up to the feasting on African labour and resources that took place during what he terms the “long nineteenth century.”
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BOB NEWLAND appreciates an important contribution to the debate about how slavery helped to build the wealth of Western companies and states
ROGER McKENZIE draws attention to the much-neglected oral traditions of the global South that define the identity – and therefore the liberation – of its custodians
BRENT CUTLER is intrigued by the imperialist, supremacist and contradictory history of a word that is used all too easily
The West’s dangerous pesticide dumping in Africa is threatening biodiversity, population health and food sovereignty, argues ROGER McKENZIE