As the RMT Health and Safety Conference takes place, the union is calling for urgent action on crisis of work-related stress, understaffing and the growing threat of workplace assaults. RMT leader EDDIE DEMPSEY explains
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British books and the crisis
Why is there so little literature that deals with the reality of the recession on our shelves here in Britain, asks SOLOMON HUGHES
In the third of a series of articles, Storming the Heavens author JENNY CLEGG introduces the key themes of her book on the Chinese revolution
The US president’s career is defined by a consistent use of racist tropes and provocation. Why are world leaders so silent over his repeated vitriolic prejudice, asks ROGER McKENZIE
The Mandelson scandal reveals a political settlement in which democratic choice is curtailed and the power of markets eclipses the will of voters – only the left can challenge this, writes JON TRICKETT MP
NICK WRIGHT recalls one man’s journey from student revolutionary to Labour grandee – part of a wider world of working-class militants and communist activists whose lives shaped a generation and who should not be forgotten
Paul Holden’s book, The Fraud, exposes a hidden war inside Labour, where claims of anti-semitism, amplified by media power and factional networks, were used to break Corbynism and recast the party. JOHN ELLISON revisits the scandals, investigations and suppressed evidence from that era
I HOPE the BBC adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People goes well — Rooney’s novels are deservedly popular, so the series could be good. But it is hard to adapt fiction to TV drama. I worry how Rooney’s deadpan way of describing emotional turmoil will translate to TV.
The forthcoming series having 12 parts might also stretch the story to meet the “box-set” format for marketing rather than aesthetic reasons. Still, the team behind the adaptation is strong: Rooney herself is writing the script. The directors are Lenny Abrahamson, who made a good film from the novel “Room” and Hettie McDonald who has a long, effective TV drama career.
Normal People takes a couple from teens to twenties in an on-off love affair. Rooney has been rightly celebrated as a voice for “millennials” because she can get across all the anguish, anxiety and confusion of young adulthood — including how people can hurt each other when they mean to do the opposite.
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KEN COCKBURN relishes the memoir of a translator, but wonders whether the autobiography underlying the impulse would make a better book
At the very moment Britain faces poverty, housing and climate crises requiring radical solutions, the liberal press promotes ideologically narrow books while marginalising authors who offer the most accurate understanding of change, writes IAN SINCLAIR
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Sebastian, Four Mothers, Restless, and The Most Precious of Cargoes
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis