Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Director: David Yates

Brüno
Director: Larry Charles

If you are thinking of seeing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, but have not read the sixth in J.K. Rowling’s series about the young wizard, I can save you 153 minutes of your time by summarising the only significant moments. The “Half Blood Prince” in question is Severus Snape (Alan Rickman). Potter’s nemesis, Voldemort, has split his soul into seven pieces, which have to be retrieved in the seventh and eighth movies – the final book has been split in two – before he can be killed. There is also the death of a major character that turns this into The Empire Strikes Back of the Harry Potter series.

I Am Justice: A Journey Out of Africa
by Paul Kenyon
Preface Publishing, £16.99

The shocking picture of 27 men clinging to a fishing net in the Mediterranean made headline news in May 2007 and captured the desperation of so many African migrants willing to risk life and limb in order to escape poverty. Their inadequate boat had capsized and it was fortunate that the men were in reach of the giant tuna net that effectively saved their lives. But instead of being speedily rescued they were towed – starving, dehydrated – by a Maltese tugboat for three days. The captain, too callous to let them on board, said he could not risk losing $1 million of tuna. Eventually, they were rescued by an Italian warship.

By most standards of contemporary political measurement, Harold Macmillan, first Earl of Stockton-on-Tees, was one of the most successful, interestingly ambivalent, enigmatically attractive, albeit distinctively devious, peacetime Tory Prime Ministers of the 20th century. Vicky’s brilliant and legendary cartoon invention of Supermac was not just a product from the fertile mind of a uniquely creative cartoonist – it was also accurate reporting. He was a Supermac – with all the dubious ambiguities that such a character suggests. He was also a man who became a living political watershed.

The Future of the Image by Jacques Rancière
Verso, £9.99

Jacques Rancière’s latest work represents an enjoyably multifarious rescue of the artistic image: a rescue from both the communicative impotence to which it is sentenced by the cynicism of mass media-driven life and the other-worldly autonomy to which it is elevated by the reactionary romantic.

JW Waterhouse: The Modern Pre-Raphaelite
Sackler Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, London

In many ways, John William Waterhouse (1849-1917) was a typical Victorian painter, depicting with great skill and dexterity literary subjects inspired by the works of Tennyson, Keats and Shakespeare, as well as classical and historical themes. The flesh looks convincing, the garments look like they could be handled, the subjects dreamily distant. While he later became a follower of the Pre-Raphaelites, Waterhouse did not entirely reject the mechanistic approach of classical poses and elegant compositions – although, like them, he relished abundant detail, intense colours and the complex, if stagy, compositions of early Italian and Flemish art.

The Longest Siege: Tobruk, the Battle that Saved North Africa by Robert Lyman
Macmillan, £20

Siege warfare, a staple of medieval times, has been a feature of the British Army’s actions over the past couple of centuries. To infamous sieges at Lucknow in India and Mafeking and Ladysmith in South Africa can be joined Tobruk in the Second World War. At 242 days, from April 1941, Tobruk was the longest in the history of the British Empire. Its lifting through the defeat of the German and Italian armies turned the tide of the war in North Africa.

Taking The Flak
BBC 2

Jo Brand’s Getting On
BBC 4

Just how much realism can television viewers take in the name of comedy – even in the darkest of jet-black satires? That’s the question I’ve been asking myself about a couple of new comedy drama series at the start of their runs on the BBC. Taking The Flak is set in the world of television (specifically BBC) foreign correspondents. It owes an obvious debt to the writers of The Day Today and Drop The Dead Donkey, but it has found some taboos of its own to bust – jokes about land mines, child soldiers and terrorist hostages, anyone? Well-wrapped as these are in more familiar comedy fare (travellers’ tummy, frustrated spinsters, gun-toting natives), they still make quite a departure from the sitcom norm.