SCOTT ALSWORTH foresees the coming of the smaller, leaner, and class conscious indie studio, with art as its guiding star
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Stop the War - the historical case
WILL PODMORE recommends an outstanding analysis of imperial violence that holds vital lessons for today’s anti-war movements
Jeremy Corbyn joins a demonstration in Parliament Square, London, by the Stop the War August 18, 2021
MARJORIE MAYO recommends an accessible and unsettling novel that uses a true incident of death in the Channel to raise questions of wider moral responsibility
MIK SABIERS wallows in a night of political punk and funk that fires both barrels at Trump
Reasonable radicalism, death in Abu Dhabi, locked-room romance, and sleuthing in the Blitz
SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
A New Awakening: Adventures In British Jazz 1966 - 1971, G3, and Buck Owens
They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence
Lauren Benton, Princeton University Press, £35
THIS is an outstanding work which shows how empires cause a state of permanent war across the globe. They have sought to justify their wars with the ritual claim that their “limited” violence prevents catastrophic violence.
In part I Lauren Benton outlines the imperial regime of plunder in early European overseas conquests and in the militarised garrisons that advanced European power. This world of plunder is, as she acknowledges, still the world in which we live.
In part II, A World of Armed Peace, she covers 1750 to 1900. The phrase “armed peace” does not accurately describe what she rightly calls a “regime of violence.”
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