WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Marxism makes monumental Manchester mark
JOHN GREEN recommends a unique documentary on the timely return of Friedrich Engels to the city
BEFORE AND AFTER: Engels statue in Ukraine (inset) and its arrival in Manchester
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
IN 2017, Turner Prize-shortlisted artist Phil Collins displayed a statue of Friedrich Engels he’d brought from Ukraine to Manchester in a ceremony at the close of the city’s international festival.
Manchester is the city where Engels spent 20 years of his life and wrote his classic work The Condition of the Working Class in England, but which had no monument in the city centre to commemorate that fact.
Collins shot the whole project and his hour-long film Ceremony: the Return of Friedrich Engels not only documents the transportation of the statue but intercuts it with scenes from working-class life in present-day Manchester.
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