WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Ill-advised turn to heritage industry
The Unthanks at Castle Armoury Drill Hall, Bury, Greater Manchester, on 17 October 2015
[Robert Smith/Creative Commons] 
JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR
Prizes all round: the Bard hands plaudits to the Miners Gala, OT&JC, Joe Solo, Black Sabbath’s frontman and the Lionesses
Star cartoonist JAMIE BRITTON is in awe of a graphic novel of epic proportions that explores class, religion and globalisation via the strange cultivation of Ginseng in the US Midwest
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
The Unthanks
Leeds Town Hall
BECKY Unthank is considering the parallels between her family and that of the Brontes. They’re sisters. They have bodies of work obsessed by melancholy and death. They have a lesser-known brother.
These similarities are sufficient to qualify the folk band to commemorate the 200th birthday of Emily, who wrote Wuthering Heights, with a song cycle based on a selection of her poems.
Commissioned by the Bronte Society, the Northumbrian outfit were invited to work and record in the Parsonage Museum in Haworth. Becky and sister Rachel used the time to walk across the moors, “pretending we were Kate Bush,” while composer Adrian McNally played Emily’s five-octave cabinet piano under the watchful eye of curators.
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