STEVEN ANDREW is moved beyond words by a historical account of mining in Britain made from the words of the miners themselves
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Best of 2018: Books
by GORDON PARSONS
Authoritative: Neil Faulkner
CAILEAN MCBRIDE welcomes a refreshing and timely study of the way officialdom creates structures that exclude LGBT+ rights and humanity
The bard mourns the loss of comrades and troubadours, and looks for consolation with Black Country Jess
CHRIS MOSS relishes the painting and the life story of a self-taught working-class artist from Warrington
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a star-studded adaptation of Ibsen’s play that is devoid of believable humanity
GORDON PARSONS is fascinated by a unique dream journal collected by a Jewish journalist in Nazi Berlin
Borrowed Time: Lennon’s Last Decade, Parthenope, Where Dragons Live and Thunderbolts* reviewed by MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE
NEIL FAULKNER’S A Radical History of the World (Pluto Press) is as exhaustive and authoritative as any attempt to record human history could be and it also reads with the ease of a novel.
Most impressive of all, however, is the author’s holistic approach. He recognises that every major turning point or revolution in humanity's journey has depended upon the natural, social, technological and geopolitical conditions of the time.
As Marx stated, people make their own history but they do not make it as they please and, if the final chapters paint the potential of a disastrous future, Faulkner spells out the lessons from the past and what must be done to avoid the end of history.
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GORDON PARSONS recommends an ideal introduction to the writer who was first to give the English a literary language
GORDON PARSONS welcomes a graphic biography of George Sand, the most popular French novelist in 19th-century Britain
