GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
A poignant remembrance of things past
FM Dostoevsky Academic Drama Theatre in Nizhny Novgorod, designed by V Somov, built in 1987
[Arseniy Kotov]
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an excellently crafted new musical that explores the life and death of Ruth Ellis
PAUL DONOVAN is tickled by the excruciating take-downs of one of the funniest, wittiest, political writers around.
RON JACOBS points out, via a transcription of Kissinger’s secret recordings, that Trump could never have existed without Nixon and Kissinger
ELLIS RAE is persuaded that the advantages of the ‘talking cure’ are superior to the treatment of mental illness with drugs
JOHN GREEN, MICHAL BONCZA and BELLA KATZ review The Good Boy, Broken English, and Don't Be Prey
SOVIET CITIES Labour Life Leisure
by Arseniy Kotov
FUEL £24.95
“I WAS born in 1988 and have no experience of life in the USSR, but looking at its architecture it is clear that it was a great civilisation with a genuine intention to build a fairer society,” writes Arseniy Kotov in the introduction to his fascinating photographic record of the Soviet Union interrupted.
Kotov denotes the ever-present art on the facades of buildings, particularly housing estates, with motives from socialist life and regrets the demise of the architecturally legendary palaces of culture — vibrant communal hubs with workshops, lectures, performances — these days transformed into indoor markets where now, its once gainfully employed visitors and participants, eke a meagre living.
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HENRY BELL notes the curious confluence of belief, rebuilding and cheap materials that gave rise to an extraordinary number of modernist churches in post-war Scotland
JOHN GREEN observes how Berlin’s transformation from socialist aspiration to imperial nostalgia mirrors Germany’s dangerous trajectory under Chancellor Merz — a BlackRock millionaire and anti-communist preparing for a new war with Russia
RON JACOBS recommends a painstaking study of the communists and revolutionaries who congregated in Moscow after 1917