Kamila Shamsie’s 2017 novel Home Fire plays with ideas of belonging and nationality. It’s a very contemporary take on Englishness.
Category: politics
Nailing Harvey Weinstein
She Said sits in a familiar genre of films about journalism. But because sexual harassment is still all around us, it doesn’t reach narrative closure.
The look of punk
Jamie Reid will always be associated with Sex Pistols. But he was a radical artist his whole life.
The ‘most significant’ political films
The New Review’s list of the 100 ‘most significant’ political films has some of the usual suspects, but also some surprises.
Daniel Ellsberg and ‘The Post’
Steven Spielberg’s film The Post is effectively a prequel to All The President’s Men. But it couldn’t be more different.
Jazz on the frontline
The history of black American jazz is also a history of routinely violent policing and harassment.
Sputnik at 60
The launch of Sputnik, in October 1957, meant that people had to reimagine their ideas about the Soviet Union–and about space.
Palaces of gold
On his current tour the folk singer Martin Simpson is singing ‘Palaces of Gold’ to remember the Grenfell Fire victims, both dead and alive. The song was written by Leon Rosselson after the Aberfan disaster.
‘See ancient beauty revived’
Mitchell Loeb’s 1947 travel poster was designed in support of a Jewish homeland. With hindsight, ironies abound.
‘Eddie, they’ll arrest you’
When the Tour De France crossed into Spain in 1974, Eddie Merckx started shouting the three words of Basque he’d been taught by Basque riders. If the police had heard him, he’d have been arrested.