STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
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Split seams
MATTHEW HAWKINS savours the memoir of growing up in the slums of Glasgow in the 1970s and '80s
TOM STONE urges you to catch the last dates of a New York singer/songwriter, never afraid to challenge her audiences musically or politically
JAN WOOLF examines work that aims to give viewers a material experience of the environments in the polar north and Britain equally affected by the climate crisis
The bard recalls advice received 50 years ago from his TRB muse, and sorts out appropriate legislation for football club ownership
MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review Facing War, Kontinental ’25, Bugonia, and Relay
MAYER WAKEFIELD is frustrated by a production of Ibsen’s classic study of an anti-heroine that fails to elucidate her motivations
PETER MASON tunes his ear into the domestic affairs of a Carribbean couple with a troublesome son
Slum Boy: a portrait
Juano Diaz
Brazen, £20
INSTEAD of struggling to write sentences with lots of adjectives as his teacher has decreed, a tiny child with scant schooling plays with a pair of craft scissors.
He cuts a long slit up the outside of his trousers and is absorbed by the miracle of his revealed leg. Happening upon on this, his teacher is horrified and shouty. She demands to know why he has done this bit of sartorial damage and she threatens him with punishment if he cannot explain himself. His expression of bafflement seems like the right way of joining in.
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MATTHEW HAWKINS is drawn into the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India