GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
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‘Do anything to make the whole word listen’
The great folk artist and activist PEGGY SEEGER is about to release a new album and here she talks to Lynne Walsh about its themes and the importance of speaking out about women's oppression, the environment and the survival of the arts post-Covid
Peggy Seeger and (right) with Paul Robeson in Trafalgar Square in 1960
[Vicki Sharp]
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production whose design and cartoonish acting overwhelms the close scrutiny of characters
SUSAN DARLINGTON enjoys the raucous familiarity of a traditional topsy-turvy pantomime
RON JACOBS introduces the latest novel by the best writer of US working-class fiction writing today
HENRY BELL is fascinated by the underlying curiosities and contradictions of one of the great poets of the Mediterranean
DAVID RENTON recommends a books that explores the ways in which disabled people are made to feel both of and not part of this world
BILLED as “probably” Peggy Seeger’s final solo album, First Farewell has plenty of the elements her fans love: humour that is wry but never unkind, sweetly crafted tunes that sound fresh and ancient and songs that could be lullaby and lament in one.
It is her 24th solo album in an unbroken 68-year career. It’s a tad mindblowing that this vivacious woman will be 85 in June.
Seeger prides herself on producing songs that are diverse. She owes the ability to write in a number of different styles to her late husband, folk artist Ewan MacColl.
With him, she founded The Critics Group for young singers to perform traditional songs or compose new ones using traditional song structures.
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