Archives for Reviews
HIP BOOK REVIEW: Escape From Germany – Another Side
You Can Go Now…But Leave the ButterBy Barbara SchultzThe Book Press, £ BY VICTORIA KINGHAM A few weeks ago we previewed Barbara Schultz’s memoir of her mother, who escaped from…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Establishment and Fascism
If We Tolerate This By Daniel TrillingPublished by Picador, 2026, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON This timely book is subtitled ‘How the British establishment made the Far Right respectable’. A…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Challenging the Hope Deficit
Making A MovementBy Barney CullumPublished by Acropolis, 2023, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON Those paying attention to world affairs today know there is something of a ‘hope’ deficit. It is…
Escape from Oppression: Book Launch
You Can Go Now…But Leave The Butter is a powerful account of the life of Elzbeth Hoeger, a woman whose experiences spanned some of the most turbulent decades in German…
Sort Out Your Death – Live Your Life
Get Ahead of Being Dead: Your Handy Planner for the End of Life is the second book by Evie King, local author, humanist, and former stand-up comedian. It’s an appropriate…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Oil be Damned Part Six
The Future of Agriculture By Sarah BearchellPublished by Icon Books, 2025, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON This book is pretty good on the crises that are coming, yet a bit…
HIP BOOK REVIEW: Unashamedly Subjective and Personal
Sheila: Portrait of an Unknown ArtistBy Teresa ThornhillPublished by Dornberger books, £14REVIEW BY FELICITY LAURENCE Sheila Denning was a brilliant painter who lived during the twentieth century, from 1920 to…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW – Oil Be Damned: Part Five
Extractive Capitalism By Laleh KhaliliPublished by Profile, 2025, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON Khalili’s new book is unexpectedly timely. Its subtitle is ‘how commodities and cronyism drive the global economy’.…
HIP BOOK REVIEW Escape Or Die: A Refugee’s Tale
The Right of PassageBy Julian Beecroft (with Sheri Blaney) Published by The History Press Hardback £25REVIEW BY HUGH SULLIVAN This book traces the endeavours of one German Jewish family to…
HIP BOOK REVIEW: Days of Future Utopias
Boom! The Exploding Cinema and the New London UndergroundBy Duncan ReekieREVIEW BY KERRI SHARP St Leonards-dwelling filmmaker, author, artist and performer Duncan Reekie has recently compiled and published an impressive,…
HIP BOOK REVIEW: How the Vote was Won
Mary Raleigh Richardson: The suffragette arsonist who slashed the Rokeby VenusBy Helena Wojtczak, Hastings Press, 2025, pb £, hb £25REVIEW BY VICTORIA KINGHAM The vagaries of the Art world are…
Book Review: Fixing Hastings and Rye
DAVE YOUNG Fixing Hastings & Rye by HIP newswriter James Prentice is an ambitious overview and explanation of the area’s social and economic fabric. Informed by the author’s Fabian Society…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Jewish not Zionist
By Marilyn GarsonCircaidy Gregory Press (UK edition 2025)REVIEW BY FELICITY LAURENCE Marilyn Garson’s book Jewish not Zionist was published in late 2024 in her home country of Aotearoa New Zealand.…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Left Behind
By Paul CollierPublished by Penguin Books, 2025, rrp £ (PART 2 OF 2)BY TIM BARTON Part Two of Left Behind is titled ‘Spiralling Up’, and is a detailed look at…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Left Behind
By Paul CollierPublished by Penguin Books, 2025, rrp £ (PART 1 OF 2) BY TIM BARTON Collier’s project here is to discuss what he calls ‘a new economics for neglected…
HIP POETRY REVIEW: Where Fairies Once Dwelt
By Jemia De BlondevilleDe Blondeville Press, 2025, £ All proceeds toHastings wellbeing groupsREVIEW BY PETE DONOHUE Jemia De Blondeville has been around on the Hastings poetry scene for a good…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: The Lie of the Land
By Guy ShrubsolePublished by Penguin Books, 2025, rrp £, Bookbuster price £ BY TIM BARTON Guy Shrubsole is the author of the bestselling The Lost Rainforests of Britain. His latest…
HIP BOOK REVIEW Strangers and Intimates: The Rise & Fall of Private Life
By Tiffany JenkinsPublished May 2025 by Pan Macmillan, hardcover, price £15REVIEW BY VICTORIA KINGHAM In 1948, when George Orwell published 1984, he imagined the Thought Police. That is, he imagined…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Terminal Transmissions
By Paul GreenPublished by Terminal Press, 2025, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON This new book by locally based author and poet Paul Green channels the spirit of J G Ballard.…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Vassal State
by Angus HantonPublished by Swift Press, 2025, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON In the 1880s, chief Concomly, of the Native American Chinook tribe, “tried to develop a system of equitable…
HIP REVIEW: The Eyes Have It
Cancelled Confessions, by Claude Cahun Translated by Susan De MuthThin Man Press, new edition 2024, £27VICTORIA KINGHAM The first image inside the new edition of Claude Cahun’s Disavowals, more literally…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Practicing Social Ecology
By Eleanor FinleyPluto, 2025, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON It is increasingly obvious that global capitalism, in its industrial mode, is creating an environmental crisis of epic proportions. It is…
HIP REVIEW: In Harm’s Way
By Teresa ThornhillPublished by Harper Collins, 2024 £ (paperback)REVIEW BY HUGH SULLIVAN This book is subtitled The Memoir of a Child Protection Lawyer. The writer lives locally, having recently retired…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: The War Below
By Ernest ScheyderPublished by Ithaka, 2025, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON As the war in Ukraine gets ‘interesting’, And with Trump making bizarre attempts to 'buy' Greenland, with threats and…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Renters Unite!
By Jacob StringerPublished by Pluto Books, 2025, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON Hastings, and indeed many places in England, is experiencing a significant rise in rental prices, ‘driven by demand’…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Reclaiming the Future
By Simon HannahPublished by Pluto Books, 2024, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON The foreword to this excellent book is by John McDonnell MP, who contextualises Hannah’s topic by noting that…
HIP REVIEW: Demon Copperhead
By Barbara KingsolverPublished by Faber 2022REVIEW BY KATE WATERS I have just read and greatly enjoyed this excellent book Demon Copperhead by the American novelist Barbara Kingsolver (available from Hastings…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Shaping for Mediocrity
By Gibson Burrell, Ronald Hartz, David Harvie, Geoff Lightfoot, Simon Lilley ‘and friends’Published by Zer0 Books, 2024, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON Over the last few decades, a growing ‘management…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: How To Lose a Country
By Ece TemelkuranPublished by Canongate, 2024, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON Canongate have an imprint called The Canons, reprinting important titles. This book is a new edition of a 2019…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Hellebore’s 2024 Yuletide Hauntings & other Occult and Uncanny Zines
REVIEW BY TIM BARTON On December 7th this year, Bookbuster ran a stall at the Mint House in Pevensey. This was a great venue for an esoteric fayre, and this…
HIP BOOK REVIEW: Bodichon
By Mary UptonTradewinds Publishing, 2024, rrp £ BY PETE DONOHUE A novel featuring a protagonist born into British colonial landed society a decade before Victoria takes the throne, is far…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW – Oil Be Damned: Part Four
Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown By Andreas Malm & Wim CartonPublished by Verso, 2024, rrp £25REVIEW BY TIM BARTON On Monday 11 November, COP29 Azerbaijan began, in…
HIP BOOK REVIEW: My Battle of Hastings
By Xiaolu GuoPublished by Chatto & Windus. £ BY HUGH SULLIVAN Xiaolu Guo, an award-winning writer and film-maker, spent the year 2022 living alone in a small one-bedroom flat on…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: How Migration Really Works
By Hein de HaasPublished by Penguin, £ BY TIM BARTON In the current divisive cultural climate, this book is a great curative to what the author describes as ‘21 myths’…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Another England
By Caroline LucasPublished by Hutchinson Heinemann, £22REVIEW BY TIM BARTON Ex-Green MP Caroline Lucas sets out, in her new book, to suggest ‘how to reclaim our national story’. Reclaim it…
HIP REVIEW: Lovebroken, a memoir
By Finley de WittTroubador Publishing Paperback, 336 pages, £ BY FRAN ELLERY Lovebroken is a memoir by Hastings writer and trauma specialist, Finley de Witt (“For anyone who’s ever struggled…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW – This Time No Mistakes: How to Remake Britain
By Will HuttonPublished by Head of Zeus, £ BY TIM BARTON It is close to 30 years since Hutton’s most influential book, The State We’re In, first came out. In…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: The Petroleum Papers
By Geoff DembickiPublished by Greystone Books, £ BY TIM BARTON The website for Left Foot Forward recently analysed data on far-right party funding, and reported that “climate disinformation database DeSmog”…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Crack-Up Capitalism
By Quinn SlobodianPublished by PenguinREVIEW BY TIM BARTON ‘Americans are deeply sceptical of once well-regarded institutions such as universities, the media and the public health system, and do not trust…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW – The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism
By George Monbiot & Peter HutchinsonPublished by Allan LaneREVIEW BY TIM BARTON The first wave of ‘neoliberal’ ideology was influenced by a century-long tradition beginning with Charles Gide, and moving…