SEAMUS HIGGINS introduces some basic facts about the role of sugar in driving a worldwide crisis of diet-related diseases

MICHAL BONCZA welcomes a new version of a classic of British working class literature that should be placed on every school English syllabus

Japanese innovation, Costa Rican skullduggery, Glasgow Central suicide, and good deeds punished in London

GILL PARSONS introduces the remarkable process by which her childhood experience of a convalescent home has become a new drama

GEOFF BOTTOMS applauds a timely and necessary play that explores the experience of neurodiverse twins

New releases from The Orb, Meredith Monk, and Marconi Union

The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words

CONRAD LANDIN picks his highlights from Celtic Connections, and makes his recommendations for the last weekend

ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era

MARK TURNER applauds Michael Sheen’s determination to revive a Welsh National Theatre with Thornton Wilder’s study of love, loss and community

RITA DI SANTO draws attention to a new film that features Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, and their personal experience of media misrepresentation

JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime

MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson

KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces

MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Is This Thing On?, Nouvelle Vague, Kangaroo, Shelter, and Melania

JOHN GREEN savours an elegy to black farmers in the deep south of the US: a vanishing way of life redolent with poetic and political meaning

Climate activist and writer JANE ROGERS introduces her new collection, Fire-ready, and examines the connection between life and fiction

by Victor Osemeka

WANJA KIMANI explores the many bonds of community experience expressed in in the bold and colourful imagery of a new mural

RUTH AYLETT appreciates the rich blend of poetry and music that accompanied the launch of the Morning Star’s anthology of poetry, Who We Are

ELEANOR DOBSON reflects on a stark visual record of the violent desecration of Tutankhamun’s mummified remains

New releases from Keeley, Lucinda Williams and Ye Vagabonds

MARY CONWAY applauds a brilliant two-hander that blows the lid off the abortion debate and rips your heart to shreds

RON JACOBS welcomes a timely biography of a contemporary of Marx and Engels who advocated revolutionary socialism