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…
HPI READ
Always More New & Selected Poems By John D RobinsonHorror Sleaze Trash, paperback $, pp162 The Barbed & the Beautiful By John D Robinson & Marcel HermsPetrichor (NL), hand stitched poetry/art book €, pp30 Reviews by Pete Donohue Hastings born…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW
Diary of an MP’s Wife:Inside and Outside Power By Sasha Swire Published by Little Brown, 2020 Review by Tim Barton Sasha, born Alexandra Patrusha Mina Nott (a name change reminiscent of our awful PM), is the daughter of ‘Sir’ John…
HIP READ
Empireland By Sathnam Sanghera Review by Nick Pelling The British Empire did not decline and fall; it is alive and well. Or, to be more accurate, a distorted dream of Empire saturates the subconscious of the British people and shapes…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW
Capitalism and the Sea By Liam Campling & Alejandro ColásPublished by Verso, 2021 Review by Tim Barton As long ago as the Iron Age, Britain was exchanging goods for profit across Europe. Traded goods from Hibernia, such as finely wrought…