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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Stone-cold truths
MICHAL BONCZA recommends a salutary new book on the Palestinians whose skills built the zionist state
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
Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel
by Andre Ross
(Verso, £16.99)
THERE’S a millennial tradition of stonemasonry that evolved around the world’s best-quality dolomitic limestone and its Palestinian practitioners are renowned across the whole of the Middle East for their skills. They’ve built virtually every state in the region except, of course, their own.
As the blurb to Andre Ross’s book points out, the stonemasons have been used to build the state of Israel and, in the process, construct “facts on the ground.” There “they demolish our houses while we build theirs,” is how a Palestinian stonemason, waiting at a checkpoint in Jerusalem, describes his experience to Andrew Ross in this book.
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