Category: Book reviews
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The promise of Jocelyn Simms
If you’re in the book trade, you receive a lot of books for review, but there are certain names that, like those first signs of approaching summer, bring a sparkle of anticipation. I was looking forward to The Promise of Thaw by Jocelyn Simms, and the promise was fulfilled. The back-jacket reviewers are Elaine Briggs,…
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The biggest lie of all
Like many former Labour Party people, I went to see The Big Lie last weekend. It had already had two public showings in my town, and this was the third. I didn’t go to the first one because – well, I was a CLP officer when all this happened. I knew all too well what…
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Dear Labour Party, thank you!
Honestly, I never thought I’d need to write another “Dear Labour Party” blog and if I did, I certainly didn’t expect it to be a “thank you” but really, no-one has done as much to help publicize the disgraceful way the party “suits” spiked the Corbyn movement than the current Labour administration – first by…
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How did our country become “Rip off Britain?”
Distractions, distractions We’re so good at distractions. Somehow, there’s always something to stop us thinking about what we need to deal with. Where was our attention, when Jimmy Savile waggled the old eyebrows and said “I’m hiding in plain sight”? Where was our attention when Johnny Rotten warned everyone about him? Where was our attention…
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Is your bookshop hiding anything from you?
In the last few weeks, Hannah Barnes’ new book, Time to Think has been eagerly awaited. Anxious parents are concerned about schools being told to keep secrets from them, and about what their children are learning about sex and gender on TikTok. In political circles, the existence or otherwise of ‘innate gender identity’ is a…
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“A dark journey into what ails America”
In his 2022 book The Storm is Here, US-born journalist Luke Mogelson starts out, surrounded by the heavily armed members of various self-instigated militias, talking to a barber who defied lockdown over ‘the right to a haircut’. It’s not entirely clear who is there defending what from whom, although the New World Order, the Russians,…
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A Radical Review
What I learned from Issue Eight – ‘the disputes edition’ – of The Radical Notion and from reading Maya Forstater’s critique of it Click here for a TRN download link. Click here to buy a paper copy of TRN. Just in case you’re thinking about last summer and saying… Oh, no, please, no! …this, after…
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The Jaguar Smile
This is a review of The Jaguar Smile by Salman Rushdie. I read it in 2023 because… From time to time, I like revisiting ‘old’ books, because until I was involved in the book trade, I didn’t know how casually ‘back list’ books are treated, nor how easily they can drop off into the ‘not…
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Did *you* know about Dinky Gordon?
***Long read*** Subtle radicalism escapes me — here though, is a salute to them as can do it, and an analysis of the huge myth-busting task feminists still face… I can be a clod-hopper in all these big and passionately fought-over issues. How on earth do you go about being polite, subtle, and yet effective…
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Come on in, it’s what you’ve been dreaming of…?
It sets off as a second person narrative, and doesn’t give you a name. He’s wading through a typical day which may or may not be the same as yours, but you’ll relate to the wading. And then something weird happens. I think everyone from H G Wells to David Nobbs has written this story…
Kay Green 