KEN BELL reads a useful analysis of what led to the 2016 vote Brexitland, Maria Sobelewska and Robert Ford, Cambridge University Press, 2020, 408 pages, £11.99 Porfirio Díaz, the man who dominated Mexican politics for a generation until his downfall in 1910, once remarked that nothing ever happened in his country until it happened. What…
Winds of Change: Britain in the Early Sixties, Peter Hennessy, Allen Lane, 2019, 603pp STEPHEN GARNETT is reminded of a time when Britain faced challenges with hope It was on 3rd February 1960 that UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan spoke to the South African parliament in Cape Town, famously warning them that “The wind of…
HELEN C. NEAVE recalls how she swapped scalpels for spades Ten years ago, I put down my scalpel and took off my scrubs, hat and mask for the last time. After eight years as a consultant surgeon I was turning a corner I hadn’t really seen coming. Now at work, I’m more likely to be…
King Arthur: The Making of a Legend Nicholas J. Higham, Yale University Press, 2018, 380 pages LIAM GUILAR marvels to see a sledgehammer being wielded against castles-in-the-air People in Britain have been telling stories about an ‘Arthur’ since at least the 9th century, possibly earlier. In the Middle Ages, those stories include some of the…
SUSAN WATSON’s work has appeared in The Rialto, The Frogmore Papers, Brittle Star, The North and Long Poem Magazine. She has also contributed to anthologies, including A Room to Live In: A Kettle’s Yard Anthology (Salt Publishing), Herrings (Blue Door Press) and The Best New British and Irish Poets 2018 (Eyewear) Reading The Rainbow Fourteen,…
Luis Quintais was born in 1968 in Angola and studied in Lisbon. He moved to Coimbra in 1995, and is professor of anthropology at the University of Coimbra. He has an abiding interest in borders, the spaces that persist between cultures, and he writes about war, trauma and memory. Quintais’ first book of poems, A…
CLAUDIA GARY's latest chapbook is Genetic Revisionism. She is also author of Humor Me (David Robert Books, 2006) and chapbooks including Bikini Buyer's Remorse, Let's Get Out of Here, and Epicurigrams, all available from the author. A writing instructor, health journalist, and composer of art songs and chamber music, she lives near Washington D.C. Her…
Bethesda Constellations, Peter Hughes, Oystercatcher Press, 2020 28 pages The Celestial Set-Up, Zoë Skoulding, Oystercatcher Press, 2020, 24 pages LIAM GUILAR combs through two new poetry pamphlets Oystercatcher Press is one of the many small presses keeping poetry alive and well and providing readers with the opportunity to sample a writer’s work for a relatively…