WILL STONE is frustrated by a performance that chooses to garble the lyrics and drown the songs in reverb
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Blemished perfection
TOM KING browses approvingly through the compendium from London Review of Books, though not without sporadic disappointment
RITA DI SANTO points out the social experience of exploitation and oppression that inform the popular winners at this year’s festival
PETER MASON is tickled by a new book and exhibition that mine the rotten anachronism of the monarchy for laughs
A Nazi zeppelin whodunnit, death amidst detoxification, a twistaholic’s delight, and noir fiction for criminals
STEVE JOHNSON salutes the mellifluous tones and clear-minded political message of a uniquely relevant Birmingham-born singer-songwriter
STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
TOM STONE urges you to catch the last dates of a New York singer/songwriter, never afraid to challenge her audiences musically or politically
London Review of Books: An Incomplete History
Faber & Faber £35
THERE was a strike at The Times in 1979, a dispute over manning levels and new machinery, which lasted almost a year. No tears to shed over that paper’s absence from the stands, even before the Murdoch years, but there were other consequences too.
The Times Literary Supplement, a periodical relied upon by writers and publishers to review the works they had written and commissioned, wasn’t being printed either. With the literati growing increasingly desperate for an alternative, scholar and critic Frank Kermode called for a new publication to fill the irksome void.
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