Tribune

The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1820-1832 edited by DR Fisher
Cambridge University Press, seven volumes, £135

Famously, Tony Benn insisted that politics was “about issues, not personalities”. What he meant, reasonably enough, was that the conflicts of the late 1970s and early 1980s were not about Denis Healey versus Tony Benn. They earnestly concerned social democracy contested by full dress socialism. Reasonable enough, indeed, but the personalities made it interesting.

Piers Morgan’s Life Stories
ITV 1

The FA Cup
ITV 1

Politicians need to choose their media vehicles with care. The likes of Jeremy Paxman, David Dimbleby, John Humphrys and Terry Wogan all take a different approach when it comes to interviewing party leaders; some softer, others tougher.

Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington by Ann Louise Bardach
Scribner, £18.99

I am engaged in writing a short and, hopefully, clear and simple biography of Fidel Castro and I therefore feel under some obligation to get up to date about what else is being written about him. Nevertheless, I do trenchantly claim the Tribune medal of honour, first class, or at the very least a Michael Foot special certificate of merit, for my intellectual heroism in having got to the end of this book.

The Left Alternative by Roberto Mangabeira Unger
Verso, £7.99

On November 9 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. With astonishing speed this dramatic event was used by the corporate elite and their hired hands in the political mainstream to announce the global triumph of political and economic neo-liberalism. This theme was fast developed by Francis Fukuyama in his controversial book The End of History and The Last Man in 1992 which absurdly declared “what we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such… That is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government”.

Dunsinane
Hampstead Theatre, London

What happened in Scotland after the death of Macbeth? Dunsinane, the engrossing new play by David Greig which looks at the aftermath of the 11th century English invasion of the northern kingdom, offers a fine mixture of contemporary resonance and a thrilling account of culture clash. Starting off with the attack of the English, disguised as Burnham Wood, and Macbeth’s last stand, the play rapidly opens out on a far more interesting landscape.

Truth by Peter Temple
Quercus, £12.99

The Australian author Peter Temple is known in this country, if at all, for the series of novels featuring the private detective Jack Irish. Because this series revolves around horse racing, and because I am decidedly not a gambler, I have tended to avoid these books. All of which means that Truth came out of the blue as an absolute revelation to me. It is, quite simply, the best thriller I have read in years.

Prokofiev – Romeo and Juliet: Eikanger-Bjorsvik Band/Bjarte Engeset
Naxos

Moviebrass: Gomalan Brass Quintet
Naxos

Beethoven – Fidelio: Crista Ludwi/Gottlob Frick/Philharmonia Orchestra/Otto Klemperer
EMI Classics

Beethoven– Egmont Incidental Music and Ah! Perfido: Madeleine Pierard/New Zealand Orchestra/James Judd
Naxos

This is a thoughtful and on the whole charming arrangement of Prokofiev’s subtle and dramatic ballet score and is particularly pleasing in the more lyrical parts such as “Morning Dance” and “Juliet as a Young Girl”. The weakness appears mainly at those times when the composer calls so dramatically on colour and authority that only an orchestra can provide, such as the rhythmic drive of brass and lower strings in “Montagues and Capulets” and the “Death of Tybalt”.