WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Seductive sound organisation
CONRAD LANDIN recommends a unique aural event on a Scottish beach
WORTH SOUNDING OUT: Irvine Beach
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
Signal-on-Sea
Irvine Beach
A YOUNG couple scream as they plunge into the water. A flock of seagulls descend on an overturned rubbish bin, surrounded by indifferent teenagers. A family’s picnic, complete with gas stoves and giant folding tables, becomes an object of envy as others struggle against the elements to get their barbecues going.
Close your ears and it could be just another sunny day in Irvine, one of several prime beaches on Scotland’s west coast in easy reach for the working class of the central belt.
But all around are tannoy speakers anchored in the sand, as if the nostalgic comparisons of our present predicament to the beaches of Dunkirk have culminated in a Blitz re-enactment in North Ayrshire.
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