Joker
May Contain Spoilers In the same week as World Mental Health Day (10th October) the blockbuster, from the DC Comics’ Batman series, “Joker” was number one in both the UK and US box offices. While the various Batman movies, and...
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Compassion and Solidarity
Is there more anger in the news than usual? Ala Sirriyeh, 2018. The Politics of Compassion: Immigration and Asylum Policy. Bristol: Bristol University Press. xiv, 208 pp. Boris Johnson’s inflammatory language at the first session of the UK’s Westminster parliament after its...
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Student Mental Health, Social Class and Insecurity in Sally Rooney’s “Normal People”
ISBN 9780571334650 Format Paperback Published 02/05/2019 Length 288 pages Sally Rooney’s second novel Normal People (recently published in paperback) has drawn a great deal of praise being suggested as a “future classic” for its zeitgeisty insights into the relationships and...
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Brexit and the End of Empire
“There is no gold at the end of the Brexit rainbow” Rule Britannia: Brexit and the End of Empire, by Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson, Biteback, 344 pages As the clock ticks down to the UK leaving the European Union (EU)...
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Highlights of 2018
Dear Readers, Thanks for reading our posts and for following us on Twitter. Also, thanks to the many guest authors who have blogged for us over the last year. We hope you all have a merry break over Christmas and...
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Seriously laughing at fantasies of Race and Gender
Wise Children, director Emma Rice, on tour across England, based on Angela Carter’s novel ‘Wise Children’ (1991). BlackkKlansman, director Spike Lee, released August 2018, based on a memoir by Ron Stallworth ‘Black Klansman’ (2014). The theatre adaptation of ‘Wise Children’...
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The interpretive difficulties of self-harm in “Sharp Objects”
Intense, languid, and darkly atmospheric: HBO’s Sharp Objects has been the show of the summer. Adapted from Gillian Flynn’s novel, the show follows Camille (Amy Adams, extraordinary as always), a journalist who returns to the sleepy Southern town of her childhood...
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22 July
On 22 July 2011, A right-wing neo-Nazi terrorist carried out two sequential atrocities, planting a bomb in central Oslo before travelling to a Workers’ Youth League summer camp on the island of Utøya with the intention of killing as many...
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THE NHS: TO PROVIDE ALL PEOPLE
I offer a very contemporary comment this week, having come across this recent BBC programme for the 70thanniversary of the NHS, by Owen Sheers (poet) and Pip Broughton (director). The programme – ‘The NHS: to provide all people’ was a...
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The Mercy: Mental Health, Seafaring and Mythical Voyages
Mental Health, Seafaring and Mythical Voyages The recent UK cinema release of “The Mercy” revisits the tragic tale of Donald Crowhurst and his doomed entry into the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race. This was a non-stop, single-handed, round-the-world yacht race,...
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Highlights of 2017
Dear Readers, Thanks for reading our posts and for following us on Twitter. Also thanks to the many guest authors who have blogged for us over the last year. We hope you all have a merry break over Christmas and...
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To The Bone
Not many films come with a health warning. But the recent Netflix film To The Bone, which tells the story of 20-year-old Ellen – played by Lily Collins – and her journey through treatment for anorexia, has received just that. The...
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