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
If you’re a Londoner with time on your hands, take a trip to Rotherhithe and spend an afternoon immersed in centuries of history.
Bernard Green offers another of his distinctive reminiscences about his early life in post-war Surrey. .
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.
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.
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.
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 • Tags: books, history, John Lucas, music, poetry, politics, travel