MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Jim Thumb
CHRIS SEARLE speaks to Glaswegian guitarist JIM MULLEN
Jim Mullen
[Ron Milsom] 
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
HE’s one of the truly great guitarists of a century of jazz, with a sound all of his own rooted in his love of the songs of Robert Burns. Jim Mullen tells me that he “grew up with his songs and their soulful timelessness.” Just listen to his beautiful millennial album Burns and you’ll hear what he means.
He was born in Glasgow in 1945: “It was the post-war baby boom. My dad was a carpenter, my mum worked in a department store. She would sing along to Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra on the radio, and when I began playing I half-knew these songs. As a toddler she would offer to read me a story at night, but I would ask her to sing me a song instead.
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CHRIS SEARLE speaks to Rwanda-born jazz vocalist INEZA
New releases from The Jim Mullen Quartet, Caroline Kraabel/John Edwards, and Matthew Muneses/Riza Printup
CHRIS SEARLE speaks to celebrated US guitarist DUCK BAKER