MARK TURNER wallows in the virtuosity of Swansea Jazz Festival openers, Simon Spillett and Pete Long
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Maria Fyfe: A working-class hero is something to be
ANGUS REID recommends the brilliant memoir of a Labour activist and politician who never lost sight of her roots
INDEFATIGABLE: Maria Fyfe (far right) in front of Mary Barbour memorial
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Singing in the Streets
by Maria Fyfe
(Luath Press, £14.99)
IN TELLING the story of her life, from her birth in 1938 in the Gorbals up to the moment she entered Parliament in 1987, Maria Fyfe proves herself to be a writer of rare brilliance.
Her Glasgow memoir Singing in the Streets is fast-paced and dramatic, moving and extremely funny. Head and shoulders above others in the field of political autobiography, she has a poet’s eye for detail and deft picture-painting and a writer’s genius for telling an extraordinary story.
It’s a story of a working-class woman’s self-emancipation and commitment to the emancipation of others. And it’s a love story that is never sentimental but that makes you weep.
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