WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Jeremy Hardy Speaks Volumes
Brilliant comic cuts from a true national treasure
FIERCE ON POLITICS: Jeremy Hardy
[Garry Knight/Creative Commons] 
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
THERE is a great big gap in British comedy, especially on radio, where the late Jeremy Hardy used to be and this book of his writing and ad libs goes a little way towards filling it.
Its pages are joyful, caustic, daft and provocative — “I was born on a council estate but once I’d been called Jeremy we had to move” — and the material, edited by his widow Katie Barlow and long-time producer David Tyler, is the kind of tome you can dip into and devour.
Hardy, who died early last year at the age of 57, could be fierce on politics. “Racist journalists ask why we should help asylum-seekers ‘who have done nothing for this country,”' he commented on his long-running radio show Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation.
More from this author
Caroline Darian, daughter of Gisele Pelicot, took part in a conversation with Afua Hirsch at London’s Royal Geographical Society. LYNNE WALSH reports
This year’s Bristol Radical History Festival focused on the persistent threats of racism, xenophobia and, of course, our radical collective resistance to it across Ireland and Britain, reports LYNNE WALSH
LYNNE WALSH previews the Bristol Radical History Conference this weekend
With most of recorded history dominated by the voices of men, LYNNE WALSH encourages sisters to read the memoirs of women – and to write their own too
