James Roderick Burns notes that Michael Crowley has taken some risks in order to negotiate a way through conflicting themes and historical viewpoints in his new collection
history
Le Corbusier has mostly gone down in history as a visionary Swiss urban planner. For the thousands forcibly evicted from District Six in Cape Town, he has a more sinister resonance as the proponent of “the surgical method” – as mentioned in the notorious apartheid-era Group Areas Act – of sweeping away what he saw as chaos and disorder.
A New Life for the Riding-Crop-Handle Maker; Sarah Lawson reminds us of a popular account of an immigrant’s experience which has – perhaps undeservedly – fallen out of the public eye
Bernard Green offers another of his distinctive reminiscences about his early life in post-war Surrey. .
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
John Lucas finds multiple reasons to recommend this memoir by Gail Holst-Warhaft which is studded through with her own accomplished poetry and also gives a shrewdly observant account of post-war Greek history
By Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, history, music, poetry, politics, travel, year 2017 0 • Tags: books, history, John Lucas, music, poetry, politics, travel