WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Moscow Monumental
How architecture transformed the Russian capital into a modern metropolis
Moscow State University remained the tallest building in Europe until 1997
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
CONTRARY to the popular image in the West of a dull, grey and brutal USSR, in Moscow Monumental Katherine Zubovich reveals how the general plan for the city in the 1930s aimed to improve standards of living, deal with the housing crisis, provide new amenities to Muscovites and beautify a city of “narrow and curving streets with dozens of lanes and dead ends.”
The architecture of Moscow — and my one criticism of the book is that it’s not well served by the small and grainy photos illustrating the text — goes beyond the typical tourist pictures of Red Square and onion domes. Changing styles mirrored the growth and development of a new nation.
The Palace of the Soviets was planned as a 100-storey skyscraper topped by an 80-metre-high statue of Lenin. Futuristic features such as automated cloakrooms hint at the ambitions of the Soviet Union to come, a nation that had big dreams of an evolution from peasant state to the superpower that put the first man in space.
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