It seems there is no escaping Joan – the girl who led the French to victory in battle against the English in 1429. A recent trip to Paris again confronted me with her ubiquity – go into any French art institution and there will be at least an etching of her here and a drawing of her there. There are so many books on Joan that it seems ludicrous that we have yet another. However, Larissa Juliet Taylor succeeds in presenting Joan differently – as a girl, first and foremost, and not simply as a saint in the making which is what many previous biographers and hagiographers have done. Taylor also shines a spotlight on the role played by Yolande of Aragon, the older female who helped Joan take centre stage but who pulled many of the strings at court, setting in motion the process of turning Joan into an icon.

But, as Taylor tells us, Joan was far from being a saint or a religious fanatic. She also challenges the theory that Joan was mad or anorexic or both although Joan’s eating habits, or eating disorders, were a subject for comment even then. Louis de Coutes, a page assigned to her, remarked how “frequently she would eat only a morsel of bread the whole day; it was astonishing how little she ate”.

There have been suggestions that she was psychotic, or a witch, yet Joan was not an odd ball in her own time. Taylor takes great care to emphasise that Joan did not partake in the fasting undertaken by other religious women. Indeed, at court, the same page said “when she was in her lodgings, she ate only two meals a day”, yet there were many Medieval women who were lucky to get two meals a day and who would not have been considered in the same light.

The psychological disorder claims could also give the lie to Joan’s consistent desire to go into battle against the English. There was simply no room for doubt which, however, could be said to be a sign of some psychological disorder. And, of course, there is Joan as feminist icon, taking up a man’s role in leading the French into battle, which would be astonishing even now in the 21st century.

Yet this was a woman who seems to have had contempt for other women, although perhaps this was just loose women because her soldiers, of course, had many enthusiastic females following them in the hope of earning a crust from their lust. Joan, it is said, would charge after the women with her sword in attack mode, and some theorists will no doubt find it telling that Joan used the ultimate phallic symbol of power to chase these poor girls away. Joan also told the soldiers that if they wanted to sleep with the women, then they must wed them first.  Based on all this, many would say that Joan was an insufferable, violent prude. Yet whatever theories are ascribed to this girl, and that is really what she was, they are just an example of projecting our own modern preoccupations onto her.

Joan may not always be listened to by theorists in our time, but what is clear is that she was certainly listened to in her own, no doubt helped by her “sharp wit and self confidence”. What we are left with, then, is a girl who had that rare thing, absolute certainty in her own power, unconstrained and heedless of the limitations that were put her way.

Perhaps there will come a time when books on Joan will cease investigating her, and focus on the psychology of those in power who actually listened to a 14 year old girl who heard voices.  This account, however, is a clear, concise and illuminating one, which goes some way to present Joan in a more human light. It certainly renewed my interest in a young woman who was once an unbearably constant icon.

Not the Russians themselves, if Simon Pirani’s new analysis is anything to go by. “People reasoned that capitalism could not be worse than what they had lived under”, he argues. “Now, the false dichotomy between Soviet ‘socialism’ and Western capitalism is receding further into the past, and the monstrous destructive power of 20th century capitalism is staring us in the face. It is difficult to say how people in Russia will react – but it will not just be more of the same”.

Difficult, but worth trying. Pirani, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, pins his hopes on undefined social movements, bringing together large numbers of people acting collectively to shape their future, taking politics out of the hands of the economic and political elites. This is pilmini in the sky, as he almost admits, accepting that such movements in Russia today are “embryonic and mostly local”.

This situation is a paradox, “but it can, and eventually will, be resolved”. Can it, really? And will it? Capitalism red in tooth and claw is well established, though substantially operating at the behest of the Kremlin and in a legal void. The elites look pretty well established, too, and it would be wishful drinking to pretend otherwise.

I assume this is the same Simon Pirani with whom I once (almost) shared a room in a Glasgow  University student block when we were both delegates at an NUJ conference there in the late 1980s.

He got there first and, by the time I arrived, he had a small library of Marxist and ultra-left volumes stacked by his bedhead.

My noisy appearance (it had been a long, bibulous train journey) seemed to unnerve him and he swiftly departed “to stay with a comrade in the city”. My reassurance that this might possibly be a wise step, because I snored for Siberia, hastened his departure and I had the room to myself for the rest of the week.

If the author of this book is another Simon Pirani, then I must apologise, but his high seriousness suggests they are one and the same. In the intervening years he has lived in Russia, studied the people, the language and the economy.

His opus probably deserves to be solemnly debated, but it is numbingly dense. And any study that seeks to be taken seriously, but ends with such a trite formula for political revolution, is not going to be a textbook for students of today’s maddeningly free-but-not-free Russia.

The second book under review here goes to the opposite extreme. The text is commendably brief and straightforward: only 44 pages, with thumbnail pics and one inadequate map.

If the GDR wasn’t a workers’ paradise, then it was certainly the ante-room to Valhalla. Stasi Hell or Workers’ Paradise? is rather like one of those propaganda books about the Soviet republics that bulged in racks in the VIP lounges of airports in the USSR during the days of stagnation.

Packed with carefully-potted history and “facts” about steel ingot production, they argued that life was already perfect in the Soviet Union – but it would get better.

This book’s colour cover shows a man in a Trabi waiting while women wheel a pram across the road, against a sunny backdrop of a huge department store and a television tower.

Yes, this was a paradise of sorts, argue Green (who worked there in TV for 20 years) and de la Motte, characterised by a more egalitarian society, religious freedom, sport for all, workers’ rights, co-operative farms, women’s rights, free education, health service and culture for the masses.

One almost hears the words of Fred Kite, the communist shop steward in I’m All Right Jack, who rhapsodises about the USSR: “All them waving wheatfields and ballet in the evenings.”

So why did so many, particularly the young and educated, risk – and sometimes lose – their lives seeking to escape from this paradise? Some “didn’t fit in or hankered after Western material wealth” the authors concede, “but they were not a majority”.

Oh no? And where is the evidence for this statement? Green and de la Motte fall back on a generalised Utilitarian argument that the GDR realised “the greatest good for the greatest number of people”, relying to prove this proposition on a single poll in Der Spiegel in 2008 which found that more than half of those from the East defended the GDR and what it stood for.

It could, alternatively, be argued that this was just another case of “Ostalgia”.

The writers are on firmer ground castigating the ruthless dismantling of the old economic and social order by victorious Wessies. Virtually a whole generation of men and women over 55 were forcibly retired, so the population is now 43 per cent pensioners.

Industry has largely collapsed. Many thousands were evicted from their homes, the victims of “restitution”. The young are forced to migrate to find work, as four in ten are classed as living in “economically precarious circumstances”.

This was truly a Western determination to “teach the people in the communist East a lesson, that unlike in the aftermath of the Nazi period ‘this time around the totalitarian system would be properly eradicated and its supporters duly punished’.” More than a million former state employees were blacklisted and had their pensions reduced.

This is history written by the defeated, which makes a change. Such a small squib of a book cannot rewrite history, but it might enable us to learn from it.

Physics for Future Presidents exposes some of the myths. All that elaborate, yet partial and incoherent, security at airports is to prevent an occurrence of an event that would never happen again. When 9/11 occured there was no real necessity for the terrorists to call up weapons, at the time the trained response for cabin crew was to believe hijackers and do what they demanded, which was normally an uneventful diversion to Havana.

Post Twin Towers, no group of passengers will allow themselves to be used as part of a gigantic petrol bomb; rather they’ll charge the hijackers and tear them apart or die in the attempt. The learning curve was steep. But it only took an hour. After the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon the passengers on the fourth plane did exactly that.

Anyway, why guard airports but not train and bus stations?

We have been shown the destruction of Hiroshima and imagine it happening in our cities. Yet terrorists and rogue states don’t have access to that level of weaponry. North Korea has tested two nuclear weapons, and neither has properly detonated, although it is in the interest of a malign partnership between Pyongyang’s military and US neocons to collude in pretending the contrary. Were Pyongyang to suicidally sell such a device to a terrorist group its yield of one kiloton would have a blast radius of 150m and its power would be less than that released during the attack on the Twin Towers (1.8 kilotons).

How many would die would depend on the location. Hit Wembley on cup final day and it’s 100,000. Stick it on top of an unreliable missile with a dodgy guidance system and the probable number of deaths directly caused by the explosion would be double figures or less. Which is why US intelligence would be better off monitoring DHL than North Korea’s missile programme.

Richard Muller continues in the same vein to punture the myths around the anthrax attack in the US. It was not a sucessful attempt to kill five people but a failure to kill hundreds of thousands. Regarding the claim that we are running out of fossil fuels, we are running out of oil but we have coal for hundreds of years. Chernobyl killed 4,000 and Bhopal 20,000. While electric cars, recycling and solar power may be comfort blankets for the green middle-classes they do not solve the problems of greenhouse gases.

Physics for Future Presidents is iconoclastic in its treatment of global warning. It’s not arguing that we shouldn’t take the threat seriously, but makes the point that Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth is partial science transforming (albeit high levels of) probability into certainties. Yet whether global warming is man made or not is largely irrelevant. The solution to the adverse consequences is to lower the production of greenhouse gases to stop the atmosphere becoming a better blanket to keep heat in.

This book should be compulsory reading for Labour candidates. It might have helped Tony Blair with Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Was he convinced by the dodgy science or was it just a prop for his faith?

As Muller writes, Mark Twain is often quoted as saying: “The trouble with most folks isn’t their ignorance. It’s knowin’ so many things that ain’t so.” Ironically, this quote isn’t even from Twain – as if to illustrate the aphorism itself. The quote is correctly attributed to Josh Billings, a 19th century humourist. And how he would have laughed at the state we’re in.

It’s a fascinating collection of the poetry and prose which inspired three generations of a remarkable family: Isaac Foot, Liberal MP for Bodmin, Minister for Mines and vice-president of the Methodist Conference; his son Michael, leader of the Labour Party; and grandson Paul, a member of the SWP and editor of Socialist Worker.

Isaac was a great admirer of Oliver Cromwell and his selections, from a commonplace book he kept, include pieces by John Milton, who served as Cromwell’s Latin Secretary, including extracts from Paradise Lost, On the Late Massacre in Piedmont, the lines beginning “Cromwell, our chief of men” and Areopagitica.

Michael includes selections from Jonathan Swift, including his famous Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to their Parents or Country; William Hazlitt; William Wordsworth; John Keats; Lord Byron; Adrian Mitchell; Tony Harrison; UA Fanthorpe and Derek Walcott.

Paul’s include extracts from Queen Mab and The Masque of Anarchy by Percy Bysshe Shelley as well as Paul’s trhilling – and pointed –explication of the work of a man he considered the revolutionary poet par excellence.

Whatever my prejudices, it was a massive undertaking, for Goldsmith manages to tell us how to run the world from the swamps of the Amazon to the flood plains of England – in a green way – in just 187 pages. He begins by arguing the case for abolishing GDP as a means to measure economic growth and move towards a “progress commission” which would “track signs of unhappiness such as suicide and the use of antidepressants”. It would look at “fish stocks, air pollution, biodiversity, energy and food diversity” and living standards, health and access to public services. People power, he argues, should be increased with people being able to challenge and propose new laws using ballots and referenda.

Food production, energy generation and consumption and transport are all given the environmental treatment. He argues for a zero-waste economy, for higher emission standards for cars, for a tax on polluters, against nuclear power, against airport expansion and against building on flood plains. He has become the farmers’ champion.

I have to admit, albeit grudgingly, that it’s well-written and an easy read. Goldsmith is obviously knowledgeable and doesn’t shrink from criticising the chemical industry or the big multinationals. But it is the political establishment that gets most of the flack for constantly being in denial about the effects of the widespread use of chemicals and other pollutants. That may be the clue as to why he decided to go into politics.

But many of his views are in direct contradiction to Conservative Party policy. Indeed, the Tories have voted against them, so he may turn out to be quite the rebel. Is he a confused idealist? Maybe. But I couldn’t recommend buying the book – Zac Goldsmith already has more money than he will ever spend. Borrow it from your public library instead.

At first, it is difficult to reconcile the lipsticked pensioner I see before me with the strikingly handsome bohemian actor lit large on screen above the unadorned stage where the transcribed conservations with Ravenhill are taking place.  And it is difficult to imagine that, almost two decades before homosexuality was struck from the statute book, life for someone as flamboyant as Bourne could have been anything other than relentlessly grim. In fact, he seems to have had rather a good time as he cut a dash through London’s West End.

Of course, Bourne did not in those days resemble a younger version of himself as he is now. Long before the lippy, the comfortable slacks and his “Finsbury Park’ knitted lamé top that he wears today, Bourne was a handsome jobbing actor at the Old Vic and “sex was like scrumping: it might have been forbidden but that didn’t mean we weren’t going to jump over the wall and grab as many apples as you possibly could.”

Together with the meticulously researched photographs over which Bourne casts his forensically gimlet eye, his conversation with Ravenhill takes the entranced audience from the wreckage of the Second World War to gay liberation. In Bourne’s case, it is quite a trip.

After a brief career “doing my impression of posh acting”, which saw Bourne star in Shakespeare alongside Ian McKellen, he went from a communal drag squat in Chelsea to New York, where his radical drag company Bloo Lips and it’s Roman epic Get Hur took the city by storm. Along the way, Bourne found himself up before the beak on more than occasion. He cackles gleefully as he recalls the time the judge asked him to take off his hat.

“I can’t”, demurred Bourne. “Why ever not?” the judge demanded? “It goes with my shoes”, replied Bourne matter of factly.

It is this courageous acceptance of the way things were while simultaneously dismantling the status quo with a glint in his eye and a song in his heart that makes Bourne such a quietly heroic figure. When he recalls “the arrests, the suicides and the wasted lives”, as Maria Callas sings “O Mio Bambino Caro”, the pathos is almost too much to bear. As for the drag: “It was never about impersonating a woman. It was about trying to find a new sort of man – to really question what a man was. Putting on a skirt, putting on some make up – it changed the agenda, the way you thought and spoke.”

Sadly, even Bourne’s unquestionable dignity is insufficient to overcome the prejudices that still exist and to which he has borne remarkable witness for more than 70 years. Bourne speaks with some bitterness of the double standards which allow his Notting Hill neighbours to greet him warmly on Portobello Road, only for the same people to cut him dead a few streets further away. Despite everything, Bourne has not managed to outlive the “sense and the fear that you could still be attacked”.

A Life is Three Acts is so much more than a private conversation. It is a living, breathing history lesson. I just wish more of my teachers had been like Bette Bourne.

If there is a broad theme it is one of documenting the familiar, highlighting its subtle difference, causing us to ponder what we see. This is certainly the case with the American Zoe Leonard, who chronicles the neglected and overlooked, recording the urban landscape to create an inventory of shops that form a powerful part of street culture. The shop – Century Photo Centre – is painted appropriately a rich Kodak yellow, but the decrepit building looks closed and forlorn, a visual reminder of the way digital technology has put traditional photo shops out of business. More colourful is a fabric shop, the window filled with rolls of brightly coloured material, a treasure house for the odd and unusual.

Donavan Wylie, born and brought up in Belfast, takes a more sombre approach to documenting aspects of the post-conflict in Northern Ireland. Systematically, Wylie has recorded the fabric and physical structure of the notorious Maze Prison – an institution that was seen as a symbol of the conflict between loyalists and nationalist. In the series Deconstruction of the Maze Prison, Wylie pictures the gradual dismantling of the wire fence around the buildings – a metaphor for the way that, gradually, differences are being resolved and defences can be lowered. The subdued, muted greys and sombre skies suggest caution rather than celebration.

Equally sombre is the work of the French artist Sophie Ristelhueber, who investigates the impact of human conflict on architecture and landscape. Travelling to countries such as Bosnia, Iraq, Lebanon and Kuwait, she pictures the resulting aftermath of war and conflict. In Eleven Blowups #5, a thick black, ominous plume of smoke snakes out from the side of a deserted road, the surface of which is scarred and marked. An atmosphere of threat hangs in the air.

Drawing on the work of photographers such as Diane Arbus, British photographer Anna Fox highlights the weird, mundane and bizarre in British life. With a combination of acute social observation and personal diary projects, Fox stalks parks and streets for the quirky and eccentric. Hampshire Pram Race shows two girls in athletic vests wearing grinning full-face masks. Like some freak show, the leering masks conceal their identity beneath what are humorous coverings,

but which are as disturbing as they are entertaining. More personal is Gifts from the Cats, an image of a dead bird deposited on a carpet. The uneaten corpse is a trophy for the cat, a tragedy for wildlife.

For me, the lucky winner lies between the power of the political images of Donovan Wylie, with their combination of the sober, serious and celebration, which remains in the mind, or the quirky, surreal and slightly sinister work of Anna Fox that combines the everyday with the unusual. Both deserve recognition. l

Deutsche Börse Photography Prize continues until April 18

Mercury Fur is set in the near future, a dystopian London in which gangs of teenage boys roam the deserted streets, selling hallucinatory butterflies and organising parties in squats for rich clients who have extreme tastes in sexual abuse. The story concerns two teenage brothers, Elliot and Darren, who help the gang leader, Spinx, organise parties in which a Party Guest acts out his violent fantasies on an underage Party Piece, and then videos the action.

Ridley’s 120-minute shock-fest, which caused a huge uproar on its first outing as some critics condemned its author for having sick fantasies, is brilliantly written and fully imagined. Without ever being preachy, Ridley shows how our identity depends on keeping a grip on historical truth and how we create – and recreate – reality by telling stories about it. Partly a state-of-the-nation play and partly a study of family relationships under extreme pressure, Mercury Fur is a modern-day classic whose language blisters and blazes across the stage, and whose intensely felt imagination burns up the brain cells.

Staged in a disused London office block, at the side of Selfridges, the play begins with a creepy ascent up some dodgy stairs and through a gloomy corridor into the room where the horrors take place. Uncomfortable seats keep the audience on edge throughout. Atmospherically directed by Frances Loy, this version fields an utterly committed young cast who act like there’s no tomorrow.

Although our culture is obsessed with youth, very few adults can connect directly with teenagers. Instead, teens have become the object of our fears – there’s even a posh word for this: ephebiphobia. By welcome contrast, Moonfleece is unforgettably teenage in every way. Told with Ridley’s customary flair, it shows he is plugged directly into the socket of teen world – and its electricity flows right through the 105 minutes of the play. Yes, here are all the recognizable features of teendom: the traces of hormonal storms, the rapid shifts of mood, the fierce sense of loyalty and the passion for justice.

Set in Ridley’s beloved East End, the scene is a derelict flat in an all-but-abandoned high-rise in which Curtis, a troubled 18-year-old who is a fascist party activist, confronts some demons from the past in a thrilling study of homophobia and right-wing prejudices, told through a series of fairytale monologues.

This version of Moonfleece is an expansion of the play Ridley originally wrote for the National Theatre Connections youth theatre programme in 2004 and it benefits no end from having a fully professional cast. Smartly directed by David Mercatali, the evening has cracking performances from a young but engaging cast. Yes, Ridley really is a superb writer.

Modelling a series of startling outfits, they dance, sing and show a real flair for comedy

as daffy gold-digging showgirl Lorelei Lee (Monroe) and her best pal Dorothy Shaw (Russell). After Lorelei gets  engaged to bumbling millionaire-in-waiting Esmond (Tommy Noonan), she and Dorothy embark on a trans-Atlantic cruise – only to be tailed by a private eye (Elliott Reid) hired by Esmond’s disapproving father.

Dorothy (implausibly) falls head over heels for the  snoop, just as she and Lorelei are getting  mixed up in silly shenanigans involving a buffoonish Brit (Charles Coburn), his snooty wife (Norma Varden) and the latter’s priceless tiara. Events spiral out of control once the ship reaches France and our heroines make a beeline for “gay Paree”.

The script has an amiably anything-goes feel, with even a slight screwball atmosphere as the chaos mounts. Although the big set-piece numbers are terrific, elsewhere a couple of the less spectacular musical numbers could perhaps have been profitably pruned. Then again, it would be a shame to lose even a single frame of Russell and Monroe on this kind of form, enjoying one of cinema’s great female friendships. It turns out that diamonds aren’t a girl’s best friend, after all.

The Great Offices of State
BBC 4

Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe should be made compulsive viewing for every media student or wannabe journalist, especially the television variety. It’s a weekly, highly personal, caustic trawl through the media, which damns anything that doesn’t smack of sound journalism.

Recently, it was all those cringing television exterior news shots. “And now over to our reporter in snow-bound Bognor.” Cue shivering and wet reporter standing in a dark road somewhere – it could be anywhere – with snow billowing down and kids in the background hurling snowballs at him. You know what I mean – you’ve seen it on every news bulletin. But why? Most of the time it’s not necessary and is just a waste of money. It’s all about new technology and the feeling that, if you have it, you’ve got to use it.

Or alternatively: “The press conference will be starting any moment now.” Cue static shot of near empty room with one or two people milling around chatting and nothing happening. Cue studio: “Well, it’s clearly not started yet.”

And there are the walking shots where some inane-looking reporter wanders down a busy high street, across a bridge or through some crowd muttering to a camera 300 yards away before coming to a standstill to deliver their final telling piece to camera.

Then there was John Terry. And who, asked Charlie Brooker, hyped the story up to the extent that it became the number one item on even the BBC news?  The media, of course. “There’s growing concern that Terry may have to resign as England captain… fears grow that Terry…” Yes, you’ve got it. The growing concern came not from the public, who didn’t give a jot, but from the media.

Terry’s car was even buzzed by helicopter on the way to Wembley for his crucial meeting with the England team manager. But no one was sure that it really was Terry’s car. Well, yes, it is difficult to tell from half a mile up. It turned out it wasn’t. One of these days, all these helicopters buzzing cars, hearses, ambulances or whatever, will collide and there will be real carnage on our streets.

There’s an underlying thesis here about the state of the British media and, in particular, our coverage of news that should not be sniffed at just because it’s cynical or amusing. Brooker is doing us a favour by pointing out these anomalies. Whether TV bosses will ever take on board his thesis is another matter.

The Great Offices of State falls into none of these traps. That skilled programme maker Michael Cockerell has taken an inside look at the three great offices of government; the Home Office, Foreign Office and the Treasury, talking to permanent secretaries and former secretaries of state, as well as tracking some of the daily activities of the office.

And it provides a fascinating insight. The Home Office is known as the graveyard; few ministers ever enhance their career within its walls, instead usually leaving feet first. Roy Jenkins described it as the “dark department”. It seems immovable and little more than a containment exercise. Tony Blair was horrified at the attitude that nothing could be done. Everything had to be managed rather than reversed – crime statistics, immigration violations, or whatever. Inevitably, as a number of ex-ministers can testify, it led to clashes between civil servants and politicians.

The Foreign Office on the other hand, with its austere decoration, paintings and calm, has always been a palace of dreams or a gentleman’s club. Margaret Beckett was made to feel little more than an inadequate interloper. Margaret Thatcher was never interested in the Foreign Office. The mores of the Foreign Office has always been diplomacy and compromise. She wanted neither, particularly when it came to the Falklands and Europe. Robin Cook said that he was never sure whether he had arrived in a Rolls Royce of an office with a wonderful staff or had been kidnapped and taken into custody.

It took that wonderful Whitehall analyst Peter Hennessy to sum it all up. He reported that he had been told by an MI6 man with Cold War experience that the two great pillars of the 20th century had both gone – the Soviet bloc and the Foreign Office. The Foreign Office, it seems, has finally been  reined in – a mere shadow of its former self.