Reviews of A New Kind Of Wilderness, The Marching Band, Good One and Magic Farm by MARIA DUARTE, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA
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A Centenary for Socialism challenges preconceptions and explodes myths
ROBERT GRIFFITHS previews a new single-volume history, A Centenary for Socialism: Britain’s Communist Party 1920-2020
SCOTT ALSWORTH foresees the coming of the smaller, leaner, and class conscious indie studio, with art as its guiding star
MARJORIE MAYO recommends an accessible and unsettling novel that uses a true incident of death in the Channel to raise questions of wider moral responsibility
MIK SABIERS wallows in a night of political punk and funk that fires both barrels at Trump
Reasonable radicalism, death in Abu Dhabi, locked-room romance, and sleuthing in the Blitz
SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
It’s been a long time coming. Studies of Communist Party history in Britain have been published on a substantial scale over recent decades. Four volumes of “official history” by party members James Klugmann and Nora Branson took the story from before the foundation of the party in 1920 up to 1951.
These were informative if somewhat orthodox accounts, written by historians in a position to reveal more but who chose to present the facts and defend them against the party’s right-wing and far-left detractors.
Books by John Callaghan and Geoff Andrews were presented by their publishers as a continuation of the series. Unfortunately, however, the former tried too hard amidst a welter of useful information to portray a tired party in inexorable decline, either wrong or thwarted sooner or later at almost every turn.
The less said about Andrews’ one-sided apologia for the destructive impact of Eurocommunist revisionism, the better. He has composed a semi-fictional odyssey which ends with Odysseus slaying Penelope in a mercy killing.
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