CATHERINE STEEL relishes a compelling novel about Augustus’s right hand man, but misses the politics, the cultural shifts, and more detail about his restoration of Rome
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I Want to Believe by AM Gittlitz
The truth about the life of Argentine Trotskyist J Posadas is indeed stranger than fiction
PARANOID PROPHET: J Posadas
TONY BURKE speaks to JOEL McIVER, co-author of the biography of bluesman John Mayall
A misfit couple unhappily ever after, a dead man walking, dodgy journos, and trench art trucking
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PAUL DONOVAN applauds an intriguing multi-layered depiction, dominated by a stunning impersonation of Marilyn herself
EWAN CAMERON marvels at the impossible ambition, realised with dreamlike finesse of translating Italo Calvino to the stage
CRISES breed conspiracies. The burnt phone masts across Britain, torched on the unfounded belief that coronavirus is caused by the roll-out of 5G, testify to this.
Since 2008, the long recession has seen faith in official narratives falter and proven a fertile incubator for arcane theories like belief the earth is flat. In I Want to Believe, AM Gittlitz has recovered an unlikely left-wing hero for these febrile times in the Argentine Trotskyist J Posadas (1912-1981), a figure now largely remembered for his belief that we need to take flying saucers seriously as emissaries from advanced communist civilisations.
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