CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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The mill stone around contemporary Britain’s neck
A wealth of information is let down by the final conclusions, writes WILL PODMORE
DOGMATIC MONOLITH: The Treasury building in London
[James Stringer/CC]
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
Bankruptcy, bubbles and bailouts: The inside history of the Treasury since 1976
by Aeron Davis
Manchester University Press £16.99
THIS is a splendid survey of a key department of state. The Treasury dominates the state machine.
What is its purpose? The record shows that it consistently opposes our national industries, regional development, central planning, and much-needed infrastructure projects.
By contrast it always gives foreign companies incentives to move to Britain — regional development aid, free enterprise zones, free ports. It backs international finance against national industry.
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