Bunker Girls at the Stables
The Stables Theatre recently staged Bunker Girls – set in Berlin in 1945. Francis Saunders watched the opening and closing performances on Wednesday 19th and Saturday 22nd ; This was the first time I’d visited the theatre since the pandemic…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW
Oil Be Damned: Part OneCrude Britannia: How Oil Shaped a Nation By James Marriott & Terry MacalisterPublished by Pluto, 2021 Review by Tim Barton The borough I went to school in, Castle Point in Essex, voted a shade over 72%…
HIP REVIEW
Let me be beside the seaside Kent Barker reviews the summer exhibition at the Hastings Contemporary Does anyone NOT have vivid childhood memories of visits to the beach? Images stuck fast – sand and sea, sun and skies, buckets and…
Punk, Plastic and the Pier
Poly Styrene: I am a Cliché Film review by Martin Dickie A new film about punk icon Poly Styrene opens with a drone shot high above St Leonards before cutting to cinematic glimpses of Hastings’ seafront. Styrene, real name Marianne…
Caught by the Boggins
Jack in the Green may be a pre-lockdown Hastings memory, but many other weird and wonderful May Day events take place around the country … as Jamie Sellers discovered when he visited the ‘Homer Sykes: Once a Year’ exhibition at…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW
Inequality and the Labyrinths of Democracy By Göran TherbornPublished by Verso, 2020Review by Tim Barton Therborn has written on the problems of democracy over many decades, and this book brings several of his essays together in one volume. The meatiest,…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW
Privatized Planet By T J Coles Published by New Internationalist, 2019, rrp £, Bookbuster price £ Review by Tim Barton Over a decade ago, Cameron, then opposition leader, complained of a ‘far too cosy relationship between politics, government, business and…
HIP READ
Lost Odyssey By Richard FryerPaperback £ Review by Nick Pelling Richard Fryer is a Hastings man through and through. He loves a pint in the boozy gloom of the Horse and Groom, and yet at some point in 2011 he…
Book Choice for #ATownExploresABook22
Having explored Edward Lear’s Nonsense Songs, Stories Botany and Alphabets this April with the community of St Leonards-on-Sea, ExploreTheArch Theatre Company and its festival partners who oversee #ATownExploresABook are excited to announce their book choice for 2022. Hastings Independent Press…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW
No More Cakes and Ale? By Sophie NewtonPublished by Turned Brain Books, 2021, rrp £10 Review by Tim Barton I am lucky, my intolerance to gluten is not full-flung hospitalising coeliac disease. Nevertheless, I get cramps, bloating, and other less…