How to Make a Mess. Review by Barbara Lewis. Not the Bible, not “Winnie the Pooh” not even Harry Potter – “How to Eat” was the book the loving father of Anna (played by Natasha Karp) gave to his daughter to learn to read and as a life manual.
year 2026
Rocco and his Brothers. Review by Alan Price. The rupture of the family is a persistent theme in Visconti’s films. It has been called disintegration but that sounds a bit too final for me, especially in relation to Rocco and his Brothers.
Shantify. Review by Barbara Lewis. For anyone who thought the modern wave of enthusiasm for fishing songs had crested with the lockdown singing postman, “Shantify”, uttered in an awed stage whisper, is here to prove them wrong.
The Worlds of Lucille Hadzihalilovic. Review by Alan Price. Over a period of 21 years Lucille Hadzihalilovic has produced a highly original body of work. 4 feature films and a handful of shorts that have challenged our view of the relationship between children / adolescents socially controlled by adults.
Poetry review – MINX: Jessica Mookherjee admires Karen Downs-Barton’s ability to see and understand a broken past and then reassemble the fragments
A DISLOCATION OF MIND: Alwyn Marriage examines David Banning’s self-declared “attempts to engage with the many contradictions swirling around in the mind of RS Thomas”
Poetry review – AS IT MUST: Colin Pink considers an interesting new collection by Gale Burns which is sometimes emotionally restrained and yet surprisingly and strikingly graphic about politics and death
THREE MELOS PRESS PAMPHLETS: Ian Pople reviews poetry by Michele Roberts, NS Thompson and Andrew McCulloch
* LONDON GRIP NEW POETRY #60 – SUMMER 2026 features poems by: *Diana Cant *Kim Waters *Prue King *John Whitehouse *Michael Mintrom *Stuart Pickford *Kathleen McPhilemy *Siobhan Ward * Elisabeth Sennitt Clough *David I Hughes *Sue Spiers *Tim Love *Andrew Barnes *Nasrin Parvaz *Paul Stephenson *Bruce Christianson *Joan Dance *Leo F Smyth *Fiona Clark *Barry […]
Connected Worlds of Bruges. Review by Barbara Lewis. As part of the constant flow of luminaries in and out of the cultural and commercial hub of 16th-century Bruges, Henry VIII sent Thomas More there in 1515 as part of a diplomatic mission to settle trade and financial disputes. His visit to Flanders was also when More began his classic work “Utopia”.
Quartet in Autumn. Review by Barbara Lewis. Lonely, unloved women are the protagonists of Barbara Pym’s novels. The brave honesty of her subject matter led some publishers to reject her, although the poet Philip Larkin was famously among her advocates.
Poetry review – LAMP OF WHISPERS: Charles Rammelkamp discusses a new volume of prose poems by David Giannini
By Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, poetry reviews, year 2026 • Tags: books, Charles Rammelkamp, poetry