WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Valentine Ackland: A Transgressive Life
Revelatory biography of poet and political activist
Valentine Ackland, feeding cats
[Sylvia Townsend Warner Society] 
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
VALENTINE ACKLAND’S skills as a poet are relatively well known but what has always been missing until now is an understanding of the vast and important contribution she made to what she saw as the political state of the world and the plight and poverty of the forgotten individual.
As the author of this biography Frances Bingham comments: “Valentine’s work expands the history of a fascinating individual into that of a wider community.”
Ackland is best know for cross-dressing and being the lover of Sylvia Townsend Warner and all the many affairs are here, but so too are her wide-ranging passions as poet, activist, lesbian and peace campaigner.
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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
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