MARK TURNER wallows in the virtuosity of Swansea Jazz Festival openers, Simon Spillett and Pete Long

George Sand: True Genius, True Woman
Severine Vidal & Kim Consigny, SelfMadeHero, £18.99
OURS is essentially a visual age, a fact which must explain why graphic novels have exploded in popularity in recent years, with one American market research company recording over 16 million copies sold last year, and Penguin Random House aiming to see “a graphic novel on every bookshelf.”
What might more accurately be called a graphic biography, this life of George Sand portrays an author generally better known, if at all today, for her relationship to Chopin. She was in fact by far the most popular French novelist in 19th-century Britain.

GORDON PARSONS is riveted by a translation of Shakespeare’s tragedy into joyous comedy set in a southern black homestead

GORDON PARSONS is enthralled by an erudite and entertaining account of where the language we speak came from

GORDON PARSONS endures heavy rock punctuated by Shakespeare, and a delighted audience

GORDON PARSONS advises you to get up to speed on obscure ancient ceremonies to grasp this interpretation of a late Shakespearean tragi-comedy