WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
From strength to strength
JAN WOOLF celebrates the forward march of radical publisher Pluto Press, which is about to mark its 50th birthday
On a mission: Pluto’s managing director Veruschka Selbach
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
PUBLISHING house Pluto Press was born out of the radical consciousness brought about by the Vietnam war, the student movement and grassroots workers' organisations of the 1960s, a time of possibilities and hope for political change.
That generation was the offspring of those who fought fascism in WWII and were themselves politicised to the point of overthrowing Churchill and ushering in the welfare state of Bevan and Attlee.
They set up a momentum of change that could not be halted by what was seen as Harold Wilson’s rather weedy version of socialism that kept in place capitalist structures with its built-in inequalities. Inspired by Karl Marx, this was the youth who wanted a true egalitarianism.
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