New releases by Interpol, Phoebe Bridgers, Lambchop
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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]
ANGUS REID urges us to understand the persecution of Jason Arday from a political and historical perspective, and to see the victim in human terms
Re-releases of the classics Gypsy Rhumba and Buena Vista Social Club, and a stunning album by Palestinian artist Faris Ishaq
Nothing, says ANDY HEDGECOCK, can rescue this undistinguished amalgam of ponderous melodrama and shallow philosophical speculation
JAMIE BRITTON invites readers to visit 3,500 locals as part of a marathon artistic pub crawl
JOHN GREEN welcomes a valuable and incisive analysis of a world become hyperpolitical but without the mass movement institutions to represent it
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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JAMES WALSH is moved by a provocative and original take on the relationship between ecology and architecture, and a plea to work with, not against, the materials and minerals of our world
Dignity is important to all humans, argues the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School, but it does not come about automatically. In a less than perfect world, dignity can accompany suffering, but the collective dignity of working people is achieved through acting together to change the world.
KATAYOUN SHAHANDEH surveys Iran’s cultural heritage and explains what has been damaged and what could be lost
ALAN McGUIRE welcomes a biography of the French semiologist and philosopher