WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Words of resistance to the sinister, the ridiculous and the downright revolting
Michael Rosen celebrates with 1,438 children after breaking the record for the largest reading lesson in the world at Charter Hall in Colchester, Essex in 2014
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
“Poetry can stick up for the weak,” says Michael Rosen, or it can “mock the mighty. It can “glorify our rulers or it can dissect them. You choose.”
In Listening to a Pogrom on the Radio (Smokestack Books, £8.95), his new collection for grown-ups, Rosen makes his own choices clear. It’s a book about anti-semitism, racism, Trump, Le Pen and the Tory assaults on the NHS and education — the stupid and the sinister, the ridiculous and the revolting:
“I was listening to a pogrom on the radio today / coming from a party conference where they had a lot to say / about people who move, people who move here / and I got it from the pogrom this is something to fear / I should worry about the people next door / I should worry about the woman cleaning the floor...”
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