CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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Gecko’s songs are easy to relate to, brimming over with intelligence, kindness and simple... humanity
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip
The nights are drawing in, the plague stats get ever worse, the Tories’ cynical mismanagement of everything constantly plumbs newly unbelievable depths. We organise food banks, we do our best to sustain those in our communities who need help, we reach up, we hunker down. We need a sound track. One with humanity, warmth, depth, intelligence, perceptiveness, optimism. Oh, and supremely catchy tunes.
Here it is. Climbing Frame by Gecko. Album of the year. Again.
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