WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Living through Gramsci’s worst nightmare
JOE SOLO tells ALEX HALL about life as a working-class artist, and the meaning of his new anthem These Are My People
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
JOE SOLO is an award-winning musician, writer, poet, activist, broadcaster and washing machine engineer from Scarborough.
His musical odyssey began in 1987 and, on top of releasing 21 albums since 2004, he helped create WE SHALL OVERCOME in 2015, a campaign pushing for a positive response from the music community to the poverty and hardship inflicted on ordinary people by the government’s austerity program.
Since October 2015 the movement has organised more than 1,100 gigs up and down Britain and beyond, raising an estimated £750,000 in cash, food, clothing and bedding for those hardest hit, and on the back of his efforts the Morning Star named Solo “Human Being of the Year.”
More from this author
ALEX HALL follows the battered fortunes of Syria, a multi-ethnic country caught in the crossfire of competing imperialist interests
ALEX HALL welcomes a book about Gaza that recognises how imperial capitalism defines groups of people by their non-existence
ALEX HALL is unsurprised by the evidence of systemic corruption in the US, and unsettled by the undertone of alarm
ALEX HALL is thrilled by a grassroots history of of Swindon’s stunning industrial and creative past
