CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
Latest editorial
Best of 2024: Andy Hedgecock
Two books and a film that examine cultural excavation and the impact of place on behaviour
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
PAUL KNOX’s London: A History of 300 Years in 25 Buildings (Yale, £25) is a salmagundi of celebration, inquest, polemic and prophecy.
Each chapter is the biography of a building in which architectural analysis triggers thoughts on fashion, morality, marketing, celebrities, ergonomics, local government and the collision of past and present. These apparently digressive ideas coalesce into a meta-narrative of the city’s evolving identities.
The oldest building considered is a neoclassical townhouse of the 1750s; the newest is Google’s state-of-the-art UK headquarters (opening in 2025).
Similar stories
Do frozen colonists carry the virus of empire? Why is monstrosity a great way to describe capital? Was God a dustman?
![BY ANY MEANS POSSIBLE: Yanaocha mine in Cajamarca, Peru is the largest gold mine in South America operated by Newmont Corporation. It is considered the most profitable in the world [Pic: Elbuenminero/CC]](https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/sites/default/files/styles/desktop/public/2025-09/extractive%20caoitakism%20webpic.jpg.webp?itok=lkf5b6oi)
JOE GILL appreciates a lucid demonstration of how capital today is an outgrowth of the colonial economy
ANDY HEDGECOCK relishes an exuberant blend of emotion and analysis that captures the politics and contrarian nature of the French composer
SYLVIA HIKINS casts an eye across the contemporary art brought to a city founded on colonialism and empire