Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age of Paranoia by Francis Wheen
Fourth Estate, £18.99
The title of Francis Wheen’s latest book, Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age of Paranoia, is perfect. The ’70s were indeed paranoid. And with paranoia comes darkness, and not just figurative. There won’t be many, from ’70s children upwards, who won’t remember the power cuts which gave Andy Beckett his title for another book about that decade, When the Lights Went Out.
Censorship: A Beginner’s Guide by Julian Petley
Oneworld Publications, £9.99
The cover of Julian Petley’s new book conjures up the traditional image of censorship – blacked out words on a white page. It resembles an MP’s expenses claim. In the lexicon of censorship the expenses scandal gave us a new word – redaction – legal jargon for what MPs didn’t want the electorate to see.
The Savage Text: The Use and Abuse of the Bible by Adrian Thatcher
Wiley-Blackwell, £14.99
When Neil Kinnock was reforming the Labour Party, he got hung up on equality; not as a concept, but as a word. It had too many echoes of the old socialist agenda for the middle England voters he wanted Labour to attract.
Sunny Murray Trio,
Vortex, London
Jazz recently lost one of its great drummers following the passing of the great Rashied Ali whose expressionistic, freeform polyrhythms added so much to the experimental style of John Coltrane’s final years. The 76-year-old Philadelphian was one of a generation of players like Elvin Jones and Andrew Cyrille who revolutionised the role of the instrument moving from the metred grooves honed during the swing and bebop eras to more of a liquid, flowing pulse which responded to currents within the group improvisation, described by Coltrane as “multi-dimensional rhythm”.
Wuthering Heights
ITV 1
The Real Housewives Of New Jersey
Channel 4
Of all the great miscasting decisions in the history of show business, surely allowing ageing popster Cliff Richard to play the role of Heathcliff in a stage version of Wuthering Heights takes the prize. Sadly, this was not an isolated incident. Over the years, a stream of pouting matinee idols and simpering heroines with cut-glass accents have travestied Emily Bronte’s gothic novel. Instead of the violence, vengeance and full-on sadism of the original, we’ve been offered a watered-down “star-crossed lovers” romance – more Mills and Boon than millstone grit.
Alfred Wallis
Tate Gallery, St Ives
Folk art – the term used, historically, to describe artefacts produced by untrained artists – usually falls outside the interests of galleries such as the Tate, which are dedicated to collecting fine art, that is work by artists who have had a conventional training in art. Such clear demarcation – which also embraces issues of class – became blurred when, between the wars, the Tate Gallery started purchasing paintings by the St Ives-based naive artist Alfred Wallis. Like Grandma Moses in the United States, Wallis painted the world as he experienced it, unbothered by conventional concerns for formal perspective or composition. A room devoted to some 40 painting by Wallis, which forms part of the Summer Exhibition at Tate St Ives, testifies to his highly individual and engaging eye.
The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin’s Secret Service by Andrew Meier
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20
This book has been described as “a jewel” by Simon Sebag Montefiore and he is not guilty of exaggeration. Quite simply, it is one of the most extraordinary books I have ever read. The tale it tells is not just the story of a human tragedy but the history of communism in the United States and the horrific betrayal of the October revolution and those who served it.
A New World
Shakespeare’s Globe, London
The recent news that protestors are creating climate camps is a heartening reminder that idealism is an essential part of the human spirit. History has plenty of examples of both radical visions and the sense that social change is possible. Even William Wordsworth, the zealous poet who became a cantankerous old reactionary, remembered how it felt when news of the French Revolution arrived on these shores: “Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive/ But to be young was very heaven.”
Mexico City: The Capital of the 21st Century by David Lida
Riverhead Books, £10.76
Mexico has been referred to recently as a failed state. President Calderón’s tough and, many believe, misguided offensive against the drug cartels and the ensuing violence are rarely out of the news but David Lida’s contemporary travelogue, a street level panorama, offers a refreshing alternative to the doomsday headlines. Lida, an American journalist, fell in love with the Mexican capital and made it his home in 1990. His book reflects that affection but also lays bare the city’s less appealing side: its corruption, extreme poverty, the sex industry and the shopping habits of the rich all come under scrutiny.
What would mum say? Carol Thatcher, spawn of the Iron Lady, is fed up with the country her mother broke. She is “increasingly despondent about the state of this country and I am beginning to look elsewhere”, she recently told the Tabasco British Oyster Opening Championship in the City of London. Yes, it’s a hard [...]