ALAN McGUIRE welcomes the complete poems of Seamus Heaney for the unmistakeable memory of colonialism that they carry
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A rip-roaring historical romp through the author’s ancestors
The Burning of Washington (and the White House) on August 24 1814, illustration by Paul de Thoyras
[Library of Congress/Public domain]
GORDON PARSONS is fascinated by a musical — and questioning — survey of Shakespeare’s attitude to women
MATTHEW HAWKINS enjoys the work of reading the essays of a rigorous and leading London/Caribbean cultural participant
ALEX HALL appreciates the history of a famous shoot-out that is sourced from diaries, letters, and newspapers of the time
MARIA DUARTE recommends an extraordinary film that explores an absent father’s attempt to make up to his sons
JOHN GREEN, MARIA DUARTE and LEO BOIX review The Shepherd and the Bear, Hamlet, Twinless, and 100 Nights of Hero
The Broken Boy
by Patrick Cockburn
OR Books, £14.53
PATRICK COCKBURN is well-known as a Middle East war correspondent. He was left with a limp after falling victim as a child to the outbreak of polio in Co Cork in 1956.
His 2005 memoir of the epidemic has been republished, and includes a perspective on Covid gleaned from his observations of the spread and treatment of the “Kent variant” from his home in Canterbury.
His account of polio conveys powerfully the sense of panic and fear among parents, and the traumas suffered by children in isolation hospitals under the care of often insensitive and even cruel nursing staff.
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MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times