MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
An indispensable history of the SCRSS
CHRISTINE LINDEY marvels at a history of the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR
HERO'S WELCOME: Toasting Yuri Gagarin at the Society’s premises in Kensington Square, July 1961
[Courtesy of the SCRSS] 
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
An Unpopular Cause : A Centenary History of the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR 1924-2024
Jane Rosen, SCRSS, £15
JANE ROSEN points out that throughout its existence the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR (SCRSS) has had to deal with anti-Soviet and/or anti-Russian propaganda in the mainstream press, lack of funds and varying degrees of invidious surveillance by the British authorities. Yet it has survived due to support from its members and sympathisers and even had periods of popularity, especially during WWII.
In 1924 only a few years after the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Labour government established diplomatic relations with the Soviet government and the society was founded that year by socialists and other progressives including EM Forster, HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Sybil Thorndike, Julian Huxley and JBS Haldane.
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ANDY HEDGECOCK admires a critique of the penetration of our lives by digital media, but is disappointed that the underlying cause is avoided
MAT COWARD recalls the occasion when the first man in space paid a visit to our shores in 1961
CHRISTINE LINDEY welcomes a fascinating survey of the work of the communist and socialist artists who founded the AIA in the 1930s