ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Ackroyd & Harvey: The Art of Activism, The Lost Bus, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, and Happyend
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Education for Social Change
Engrossing account of the Woodcraft Folk sheds light on its occasionally flawed idealism
MARY CONWAY relishes the spectacle of a domestic implosion in a setting strangely divorced from any social, political or cultural context
SUSAN DARLINGTON appreciates a retelling of the Merlin myth that emphasises family and belonging
JAN WOOLF is beguiled by the tempting notion that Freud psychoanalysed Hitler in a comedy that explores the vulnerability of a damaged individual
TONY BURKE reviews new releases from Cheikh Lo, Mishra & Deepa Shakthi, N’Faly Kouyate
Gin Lane by William Hogarth is a critique of 18th-century London’s growing funeral trade, posits DAN O’BRIEN
ANDY HEDGECOCK sees his scepticism lessened by a story is more complex and far-reaching than is initially apparent
WITH some of its groups across Britain currently meeting via Zoom, nobody can accuse the Woodcraft Folk of failing to move with the times.
But scratch the surface and you will always find hallmarks of its history, exemplified by the chorus of the Folk’s anthem, which begins: “Hark! The beating of the tom-tom.”
In its early years, much of the Folk’s practice was inspired by an idealised — and yet somewhat twisted — understanding of American-Indian culture. In reaction to the apparent alienation of Western civilisation from the natural world, the pioneers of “woodcraft” thinking — well before the Folk itself was established — sought to emulate the American-Indian connection to the land.
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