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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Bloody hell - I do all the work!
CHRIS MOSS relishes the painting and the life story of a self-taught working-class artist from Warrington
Eric Tucker, The 11/5 Gang / Pic: © the estate of Eric Tucker
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
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
CHRIS SEARLE wallows in an evening of high class improvised jazz, and recommends upcoming highlights in May
The Secret Painter
Joe Tucker, Canongate, £18.99
IT’s never been easy for non-London painters to gain recognition. The art world, like that of publishing, music, performing arts, and the media, is headquartered in the capital, and is as insular and class-bound as it is geographically lazy. As Raymond Williams observed in Keywords, “regional... can be used to indicate a ‘subordinate’ or ‘inferior’ form”; as, he notes, can “provincial”. That book was published in 1976. It’s still depressingly true.
Was this part of the reason Eric Tucker never quite believed his work was worthy of a show? Was this why, as he might have put it, he couldn’t be doing with all the fuss, instead continuing to work as a labourer until being forced into early retirement by chronic arthritis? Was it just too unrealistic a prospect for a northerner, born in 1932, who began work when he was 14, to become an artist?
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