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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Son’s cathartic biography of a Jewish parent turned fascist
John Haylett reviews Fascist in the Family: The Tragedy of John Beckett MP, by Francis Beckett (Routledge, £16.99)
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
New releases from Javon Jackson, IZE Trio, and Mal Waldron Trio
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
“SELF-HATING Jew” is a concept misused in recent decades to slur Jews critical of Israel’s deeds or the entire zionist project. But here it is entirely apposite.
Francis Beckett grew up knowing that his father John Beckett had been a left-wing Labour MP who threw in his lot with Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF)before setting up the National Socialist League with William Joyce.
While Joyce, under his Lord Haw-Haw guise, broadcast nazi propaganda from Berlin during WWII — he was hanged at its denouement as a traitor — Beckett was interned in Holloway jail alongside Mosley.
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![Richard Baxell speaking at the Marx Memorial Library in London [Pic: Karl Weiss]](https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/desktop/public/2026-07/RichardBaxell22Jul23.jpeg.webp?itok=HCh8iPRb)
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GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a biography of the Marxist intellectual and author, made from the point of view of his son