Jane Hardy Nothing to Lose But Our Chains: Work and Resistance in Twenty-First-Century Britain, Pluto, 2021, 9780745341040, pp272, £19.99 Reviewed by Eleanor Kirk If there’s a central theme in this book, it is optimism. Drawing on both secondary data analysis and interviews with activists from across the union movement and beyond, the book provides a […]
David Bleiman, This Kilt of Many Colours, Dempsey and Windle, 2021, 9781913329457, £8.00, pp50. Reviewed by David McKinstry This Kilt of Many Colours is a poetry pamphlet which explores cultural identity, memory and the tensions between alienation and assimilation and how they shape individual and group identity. It is written from the perspective of a […]
The Red Paper Reviewed by Vince Mills. In the latest issue of the Red Paper, it is argued that the Scottish Parliament has fallen far short of the kind of parliament we need in these days of footloose, vampire capitalism. The current, dire state of the Scottish economy and the need for a radical strategy […]
Can lefties like Wagner? Graeme Arnott previews his granddaughters’ forthcoming production of her great-grandfather’s opera ‘Lohengrin’. It’s August 1876 and Nuremberg’s hotels are full to bursting with Wagnerians attending the first Bayreuth festival. Unable to obtain a room, Marx ends up spending an uncomfortable night on a railway station bench. Aggrieved, he castigates Richard Wagner […]
James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Commentary by Douglas Gifford, Readings by John Sheldon, Association for Scottish Literary Studies, £14.95, 9780948877827 Reviewed by Sean Sheehan This is a set of two CDs, not the book by James Hogg that was published anonymously in 1824 and best read in the Oxford […]
The International Companion to James Macpherson and the Poems of Ossian, edited by Dafydd Moore, Scottish Literature International, £14.95, 9781908980199 James Macpherson, The Poems of Ossian: The Son of Fingal (Classic Reprint), Forgotten Books, £12.85, 9781331367130 Reviewed by Sean Sheehan. James Macpherson was born in Inverness-shire in 1736, the son of a tenant farmer, and […]
Wade Rathke Nuts and Bolts: The ACORN Fundamentals of Organizing, Social Policy Press, 2018, 0997094311 Reviewed by Tony Adams Nuts and Bolts is a compendium of tools, examples from the field, advice and tips for building power and effective mass organisation in the community, workplaces, politics and the media. Rathke shares almost 50 years of […]
Rebecca Solnit, Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays), Haymarket Books, £11.99, 978-1-60846-329-9 Around the corner from where I sit in Edinburgh, a number of shop fronts are covered in chipboard. Stuck to those boards are posters displaying the slogan save leith walk, a protest against an application from Drum Property Group […]