WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
21st-century poetry
Reviews of collections by Sylvia Pankhurst, Chawki Abdelamir and Martin Hayes
RESOLUTE: Sylvia Pankhurst recovering from her hunger strike in prison
[N Smith] 
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
EXACTLY a hundred years ago, Sylvia Pankhurst was sentenced to six months in prison for publishing articles in the Workers’ Dreadnought urging London dockers not to load ships with arms to be used against the infant Soviet Union.
At her trial she declared: “Capitalism is a wrong system of society and it has got to be smashed — I would give my life to smash it.”
In Holloway prison she began writing a series of poems about the working-class women she met there. Because the authorities refused to allow her pen and paper, she had to use chalk to write what she called her “faithful lines upon inconsistent slate.”
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