MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Fools the theme, Satire the song
WILL STONE relishes a refreshingly irreverent raconteur's record on politics at the turn of the millennium
George Osborne's "weird nose, weak chin and cruel eyes... the fact he clearly has no bones in his head, his skull replaced by lard and gristle"
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
As I Please: And Other Writings, 1986-2024
Martin Rowson, Seagull Books, £19.99
ONE of the most celebrated political cartoonists of our age, Martin Rowson has a decades-long written record of equally skilful takedowns of the world’s many hypocrisies and hypocrites, proving to the detractors that cartoonists can write. Shock, horror!
The all-singing, all-dancing Rowson spent 20 years from 1997 showcasing his ready wit in the pages of the left-wing Tribune magazine for its As I Please column — a slot originally occupied by none other than George Orwell in the 1940s. Rowson himself admits to “squatting” in Orwell's column in a June 2003 article marking 100 years since the author’s birth.
But in reality the column — which gave Orwell carte blanche to improvise on any subject he pleased — is the perfect modus operandi for Rowson’s eccentric, offbeat mindset.
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