Situated at the top of the Crawford building, the bright and modern open-plan space exhibits the latest batch of budding designers. The graphic design segment of the degree show always lives up to the hype, so it comes as no surprise that this year’s students have had their successes recognised by the International Society of Typographic Designers (ISTD) – Read More
“Well, that was the clerk class for you. They might be completely without culture, but they certainly knew how to make themselves comfortable …” Sarah Waters fans will love her latest mighty tome (almost 600 pages), this time set amid the economic upheavals which followed the First World War. Frances Wray and her mother, living Read More
Precocious [prɪˈkəʊʃəs]. Adjective: (of a child) having developed certain abilities or inclinations at an earlier age than is usual or expected. Precocious is an apt description of young Leeds-born poet Adam Lowe, an award-winning writer, publisher and poet who has received plenty of accolades in his relatively short career, including that of LGBT History Month Read More
The Last Word is an uncomfortably honest read which deals with universal themes of the human condition such as love, ageing and the baggage of the past. Hanif Kureishi’s novel sets up these themes by centering the plot on the relationship between a young writer and Mamoon, an ageing, well-respected and controversial author whom he Read More
The Bees, Laline Paull’s dystopian novel, is a bizarre and often shocking allegory of the human world’s negotiation of difference, otherness, power and social hierarchies. Given the widespread use of pesticides and farming on an industrial scale, the book also functions as a timely reminder of our role in a global declining bee population, with Read More
The Way Home is Millicent Graham’s second poetry collection following her debut work The Damp in Things, also published by Peepal Tree Press, in June 2009. Although these collections are Graham’s only solo publications, her work has been published in a number of anthologies, the most recent of which being Yonder Awa (comprising of Scottish Read More
I plant a handstand on the edge of human existence tempting mythical beasts to call my bluff, make a scapegoat out of me, or at the very least a media sensation. (‘Let Me Bring You to the Brink’) From the jacket inwards, Priscila Uppal, a Canadian of South Asian descent, fires her mantra for this Read More
Imagine you are interrogating water coercing the hydrogen and oxygen to give up their bonds, give up each other. New York-based poet Philip Fried’s Interrogating Water can be read as an intense critique of the ethics of modern day American warfare, tackling themes of political ambivalence, military torture, weapons and those who wield those forces. Read More
Ihor Pavlyuk’s biography reads somewhat like that of a secret agent. Born in the Ukraine in 1967, he attended the St. Petersburg Military University but left to pursue a literary career before being sentenced to hard labour in the Taiga. He regained his freedom when the Soviet Union fell and went on to become a Read More
Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks is much-coveted; though newly published, it feels entrenched in the nature-writing canon already. From the exquisite cover and fine end-papers on, it should be owned by all lovers of landscape and language. Perhaps that is as far as Landmarks can, and should, be categorised. Macfarlane’s prose-poetic text calls for “a decentred eye Read More