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APURBA CHATTERJEE explains how British artists in India used the “picturesque” to reshape colonial landscapes and celebrate imperial power
The biggest rip-off of them all
The New Enclosure is a damning exposé of how public land is being sold off for private profit, says JOE GILL
PAUL DONOVAN welcomes a revival of Reginald Rose’s classic play that reminds us of the fundamental need for trials with juries
SIMON PARSONS applauds an exceptional performance of Wesker’s little-known play, by the same actor for whom it was written 45 years ago
ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review Late Fame, The Death of Robin Hood, Leviticus, and Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass
ANGUS REID recommends a uniquely accomplished documentary collage that contemplates our relation to the natural world
GORDON PARSONS enjoys Kant’s ‘mind-boggling’ theory of human reality: that we create the reality we experience
The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain
by Brett Christophers
(Verso, £20)
THE PRIVATISATION of British land has delivered nothing that the government claimed it would — value for public money, new jobs and homes and more “efficient” land allocation.
Instead, in a four-decades process that began under Margaret Thatcher, it has transformed Britain into a rentier economy, in which the vast majority of private wealth is held as land and property. Industrial Britain has become landlord Britain, with many of our barons hiding offshore.
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Can Andy Burnham’s programme deliver a productive economy – or merely a softer version of capitalism, asks VINCE MILLS
CAROL WILCOX argues for the proper implementation of the land value tax, which could see unused plots sold off and landlords priced out of landlordism, potentially resolving the housing and planning crises