RITA DI SANTO draws attention to a new film that features Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, and their personal experience of media misrepresentation
Latest editorial
Valentine Ackland: A Transgressive Life
Revelatory biography of poet and political activist
Valentine Ackland, feeding cats
[Sylvia Townsend Warner Society]
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era
The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words
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.
Similar stories
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
ANDY HEDGECOCK recommends that these beautifully written diaries from Gaza be essential reading for thick-skinned MPs
FIONA O'CONNOR recommends a biography that is a beautiful achievement and could stand as a manifesto for the power of subtlety in art
SARAH TROTT explores short fictional slices of life in the American midwest from a middle-aged and mostly female perspective