GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
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Just my type
On UK Disability Awareness Day ANGUS REID celebrates the art of KEITH ARMSTRONG, a pioneering activist and writer whose unique body of artwork is a vision of protest and peace
Ward 16 poem, 1972; My Typewriter Is Not Typing Like It Used To, 1977; The Plane Tree, 1999
[Courtesy of Caseroom Press]
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
KEITH ARMSTRONG (1950-2017) was a dynamic activist for the rights of people with disabilities. He was also highly creative, working as an artist, poet and musician, and a serious scholar of the history and linguistics of disability.
He contracted polio during infancy. In his teens he could just about walk but at the age of 20 he spent an entire year in hospital, undergoing complex back surgery. He would spend the rest of his life on crutches and, increasingly, in a wheelchair.
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