Anyone seeking to be reminded of how we used to work not so very long ago should take the 10-minute tram journey from Birmingham’s newly revamped Grand Central Station to the city’s Jewellery Quarter, where every other shop is a jeweller and the close-knit atmosphere of a neighbourhood once closed to the wider city lingers on.
history
John Lucas is entertained by Keith Hutson’s collection of poems about music hall – and by the performers who appear in it
Bernard Green has already given London Grip readers his memoir of Alf’s Café: here now is his “prequel” about dramatic incidents in Farnham in the 1940s…
Brian Docherty comments on political poems from pre-WW2 Japan by Kosuke Shirasu which have recently been republished in a bi-lingual edition by Jun Shirasu and Bruce Barnes
A memoir by Bernard Green tells the story of a transport café over sixty years before and after World War two.
Nick Cooke is impressed by the authenticity of Stuart Laycock’s collection of poetry from the Bosnian War
Nick Cooke explores Vanessa Gebbie’s poetic tribute to battle victims of World War One
David Cooke applauds the efforts of Paul Vincent & John Irons in selecting and translating an anthology which spans 1000 years of Dutch poetry
Thomas Ovans acknowledges the work and the craft that has gone into Alison Hill’s poetic tribute to women pilots of the ATA
Jennifer Wallace has used some scraps of historical fact and a good deal of lively imagination to build her new novel set in 18th century London
Anna Robinson looks at a recent anthology of poems about historical events and considers what we can learn from poetry about ways of exploring the past.
When a book appeared in October promising the “wild and wonderful tale of the founding of London Zoo” I picked it up in search of insight into what drove the founding fathers of the London Zoological Society and whether it has any relevance to the function of zoos today.
By Jane McChrystal • books, history, year 2016 • Tags: books, history, Jane McChrystal