WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Beer and brilliant music from Merthyr to Flanders via Glastonwick. What's not to like?
Ones to watch: Thee Deadtime Philharmonic
JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR
Prizes all round: the Bard hands plaudits to the Miners Gala, OT&JC, Joe Solo, Black Sabbath’s frontman and the Lionesses
Star cartoonist JAMIE BRITTON is in awe of a graphic novel of epic proportions that explores class, religion and globalisation via the strange cultivation of Ginseng in the US Midwest
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
I’M WRITING this on the coach to Calais, where 18 of us are beginning a two-day, 172-mile sponsored cycle ride to Antwerp in aid of Brighton’s award-winning Albion in the Community football coaching scheme for people with disabilities.
By the time you read this I’ll be charging through Flanders, fuelled by lovely Belgian beer. Wish me luck.
A few weeks ago, I had a great time at Merthyr Rising, a proper urban festival held in the centre of that compact, hard-hit but proud and spirited valley town. “It’s full of Leavers over there,” I was warned by various apocalyptic Brexit obsessives and so it is.
More from this author
Back from a mini tour of Yorkshire and Stockport and cheering for supporting act Indignation Meeting
Given the global plague of Agent Orange, the bard channels his energy into community self-help
In which we accompany the Bard into Cymru to meet his musical accomplices, young and old
The bard ditches an unspecial relationship, encounters a new subdivision of metal, and discovers the cure for a stiff neck
