MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Best albums of 2024 with Tony Burke
A horn of plenty, no less!
Rory Gallagher in 1973
[Heinrich Klaffs/CC] 
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
CDs, vinyl and downloads vied for attention almost every week during 2024. There was so much good music issued it was hard to keep up, but I’m not complaining!
On the rock front the Irish guitar hero Rory Gallagher’s double CD set culled from his 20-disc box set of BBC radio broadcasts The Best Of Rory Gallagher At The BBC (BBC Sessions) features Rory appearing on Radio One’s Sounds Of The ’70s and In Concert between 1973-1979. Easily the best hard core rock reissue album of 2024.
Fellow Irishman, Van Morrison released Live At Orangefield (Orangefield Records) compiled from three sold-out shows played in August 2014, to mark the closure of his old secondary school in Belfast — the venue of his first public performance at Christmas 1959, leading a skiffle group on Lead Belly’s Midnight Special.
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TONY BURKE says an International Labour Conference next month will try for a new convention to protect often super-exploited workers providing services such as ride-hailing (taxis) such as Uber as well as fast food and package delivery
