WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Elton John's wonderfully idiosyncratic British farewell
Elton John performing at Vicarage Road Stadium
[Ben Gibson] 
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
Elton John
Vicarage Road Stadium, Watford
ON THE walls of a flat next to the Vicarage Road Stadium, a tenant had draped a banner saying “Welcome home Elton.” The green, green grass of the stadium may have been covered in protective material to accommodate the near 30,000 crowd, but they’d all come to meet him, and the homecoming was one to match any that has gone before.
It was a wonderfully idiosyncratic British farewell, garlanded by an eclectic audience of all ages and dispositions, including a sizeable element of noisy Watford fans, there to pay tribute to the man who has transformed their football club.
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