MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
History repeated as farce
WILL PODMORE recommends a book that spells out the ultimate futility of imperialist wars
HISTORY LESSON: Taliban members celebrating on the anniversary of their victory in Kabul, August 2022
[Callum Darragh/CC] 
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
Pride and fall: the British army in Afghanistan, 2001-2014
by Sergio Miller
Osprey, £30
SERGIO MILLER served in defence intelligence in the Ministry of Defence throughout the British army’s campaign in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014. This is his outstanding study of a war that cost the lives of over 450 British servicemen and women, and over £37 billion in national treasure.
Throughout, Miller pays tribute to the courage and determination of the soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors who served in Afghanistan.
It was Britain’s second-longest war in the last 100 years (the conflict in Northern Ireland was the longest), and Miller claims that it was also Nato’s first real war — wasn’t Nato’s illegal assault on Yugoslavia in 1991 a real war?
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KENNY COYLE takes a look at David Lammy’s emerging foreign policy, dubbed ‘progressive realism,’ which supposedly draws inspiration from Ernest Bevin and Robin Cook
MAT COWARD delves into the riots that saw ex-soldiers ransack a banquet, commandeer a piano and torch the town hall, enraged by tone-deaf officials’ elitist armistice celebrations