MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Blinkers on
JOHN GREEN wades through the autobiography of Angela Merkel in search any trace of political vision or historical awareness
READ THE BODY LANGUAGE: Merkel, Macron, Putin and Zelensky following the meeting in the “Normandy format”, December 10 2019. This was the only time that Putin and Zelensky met for talks. The Normandy Format is made up of Germany, Russia, Ukraine, and France, a grouping of states who have met from 2014 to the present day in an effort to resolve the war in Donbas and the wider Russo-Ukrainian War, that resulted in the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015.
[kremlin.ru/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
Freedom, Memoirs 1954-2021
Angela Merkel, Macmillan, £35
FONDLY referred to as “Mutti” (Mummy) by many Germans, Angela Merkel spent an unprecedented four terms as Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, from 2005-21. She was the first woman to hold this office. Unlike so many of her former compatriots from the GDR, who were unceremoniously dismissed from their posts after unification, she was the great exception and rose to become the most powerful politician in united Germany.
This is her account of those momentous years, but if any reader is looking for revelations or sensational exposures, they will be sorely disappointed. Her memoir is a rather pedestrian chronological narrative of events in which she was involved, from the early days of unification, through the Kohl scandal (in which it was revealed that he had accepted millions of Deutsche Marks in secret donations from an arms manufacturer), the global financial crash and Greek economic crisis to the pandemic. During her retelling she gives us over-much detail, often only of probable interest to German readers.
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JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
JOHN GREEN is stirred by an ambitious art project that explores solidarity and the shared memory of occupation
JOHN GREEN applauds an excellent and accessible demonstration that the capitalist economy is the biggest threat to our existence
JOHN GREEN isn’t helped by the utopian fantasy of a New York Times bestseller that ignores class struggle and blames the so-called ’progressives’
