WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Alexandra Kollontai: Writings from the Struggle
Outstanding new book on the revolutionary communist who helped forge inextricable link between socialism and women's liberation
PIONEER: Alexandra Kollontai (centre, c1920) with female deputies at the Conference of Communist Women of the Peoples of the East
[Wikipedia] 
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
ALTHOUGH brought up and educated in what was for the period a middle class, liberal and progressive environment, from her early teens Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952) had no intention of becoming a dutiful bourgeois wife.
A thirst for social justice, knowledge and a profession quickly brought her into contact with Russian revolutionaries, more specifically Marxists, and it was there that she began a lifelong struggle for communism.
Extremely well read, well-travelled and a fluent speaker of at least five languages, Kollontai rapidly became a grassroots activist, prodigious writer, skilled educator and propagandist.
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