Innholdsfortegnelse for 11/5/2018 i The Big Issue

01 LAUNCH Stormzy Grime fiction. A game-changing new player in publishing set up by Stormzy and Penguin Random House will be launched with a wide-ranging discussion between the Brit Award-winning grime star and author and fellow hip-hop artist and writer Akala. They’ll big up some of the most exciting new voices of today and talk about how they hope to inspire new readers and writers of tomorrow. Barbican, London, November 7 #Merky Books Live 02 REMEMBER They Shall Not Grow Old WW1 in colour. To mark the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day this week, Peter ‘Lord of the Rings’ Jackson and team have sharpened, stabilised and colourised archive footage from the First World War, adding audio from survivors. Taking us closer to their stories than ever before, it’s a stunning…

@practicematters My parents were librarians; they really saw themselves as social workers connecting people to others, places, ideas, community resources, new developments and important history as well as fun, joy and reading for pleasure. @philcaincom Libraries have been a source of wonder, inspiration, sanctuary and discovery for me as long as I remember. I found my first books and music in one and, more recently, wrote my first in one too... Viva la biblioteca! @BigIssue @Hall_Business Got inspired to read this debut from @Beathhigh after reading a great review of his latest, only halfway through and it’s already one of the best books I’ve read this year, thanks again @NeathLibrary for the loan #saveourlibraries #whybooksmatter @BigIssue @5wood9 @BigIssue heartwarming story about Ann from Exeter in your October 15 issue. What…

A plaque will be installed in memory of late Big Issue vendor Istvan Kakas on his pitch if plans come to fruition. The much-loved vendor, who became known for decorating and tidying the Halfpenny Bridge in Widcombe with his trusty broom, died last month, aged 52, following a battle with leukaemia. In the wake of his death, Istvan’s friends and customers launched a crowdfunding campaign with the target of raising £3,000 to pay for a remembrance service. Within days almost £4,500 poured into the campaign and that money has ensured that Istvan will be cremated at Bath’s Haycombe Crematorium. Following that there will be a remembrance service at St Matthew’s Church in Widcombe on November 17 at 11am. And the plan for the remaining funds is to use them to…

1932 Founded by Gwen Huggins as the Embankment Fellowship Centre in response to poverty and homelessness among ex-service community in London. She had put an advert in The Times in 1931 saying: “Will some PHILANTHROPIC PERSON lend for four months, LOWER PART of EMPTY HOUSE, disused factory or any place suitable, to enable a canteen to be started, to relieve distress amongst unemployed ex-servicemen during the coming winter.” 1939 Michael Powell’s film Smith , starring Ralph Richardson, launched in Parliament to raise awareness of the charity’s operation 1973 New Belvedere House is built next to the Rectory in Stepney 2007 Prince Charles visits the charity’s HQ and the name Veterans Aid is adopted to reflect the work done more accurately…

The vibrations currently emanating from Will Ashon’s Chamber Music: About the Wu-Tang (in 36 Pieces) began long before the finished product thundered into UK bookshops last week. This deep analysis of the classic 1993 Wu-Tang Clan album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) arrives with a fanfare, with influential poet Max Porter declaring it a “masterpiece” and numerous hipster writers, journalists and DJs falling over themselves to publicly sign up as followers. And look, there’s me, the white Glaswegian woman waving nervously near the end of the queue. Yup, I want to sign up too. In this case, you can believe the hype. Right at the start, Ashon casts his hook. He sets the tone with two thought-provoking quotes; Ralph Ellison describing history as a “madman full…

I’ve entered two competitions in my life that had a big effect on me. I won a prize when I was nine, and this was helpful because I really, really wanted to be an author but I had this terrible handwriting, and this not-very-good spelling, and somehow I had it fixed in my head that these were things you needed to be an author. So winning a prize was encouraging, and taught me the excellent truth that being a writer isn’t really about your handwriting, however neat, or your spelling, however magnificently you can spell really difficult words like ‘Fahrenheit’ (though that IS clever, and even now I had to look that up), it’s about your IDEAS. The other time a competition came in handy was when I was a…

Video games have been culture’s ugly duckling since the days of Pong and Pac-Man , easily dismissed as mere playthings or toys. But the game has changed. The majority of gamers in the UK are aged between 21 and 35, according to UK industry body UKIE, and with an ageing audience the demand for more mature takes on serious issues has grown. Yep, that means they care about more than just Fortnite. Take Marvel's Spider-Man’s portrayal of homelessness, for example. A homeless shelter called F.E.A.S.T acts as a main hub in the game, where the hero’s alter-ego Peter Parker repeatedly returns to volunteer and meet the rough sleepers who live there over its 20 hour- plus running time. Far from faceless caricatures with…

A hand up, not a handout... Our sellers BUY every copy of the magazine for £1.25 and sell it for £2.50. Trade, not aid… Which is why we ask you to ALWAYS take your copy of the magazine. Our sellers are working and need your custom. Poverty is indiscriminate… That is why we provide ANYONE whose life is blighted by poverty with the opportunity to earn a LEGITIMATE income. The right to citizenship… The Big Issue Foundation, our charitable arm, helps sellers tackle social and financial exclusion. Prevention… Big Issue Invest offers backing and investments to social enterprises, charities and businesses which deliver social value to communities.…

THIS WEEK WE ASKED YOU... Is £420m for potholes in last week’s Budget enou€h to fill dangerous gaps – or pouring good cash in a black hole? I live in the US. You can see evidence of what happens if you fail to invest in infrastructure just about everywhere. I know there are other things to spend on but investing in roads isn’t a waste of money per se. Investing billions reorganising the NHS as has been done since Blair’s days – now there is a gigantic money dump with little benefit. Linda Haward, Facebook Potholes are a serious hazard for cyclists, I do think they need prompt attention. Emily Howarth, Facebook No, potholes can cause huge damage to cars and our road tax should be used for this. Jess_rdn,…

So what was the Budget all about? A few quid for potholes, a gift around tax on booze, a generous tax boost for the well off (except in Scotland), some weird news about public toilets, repeated assurances that austerity is over, or at least coming to an end? The thing about ending austerity is that just because you say it, don’t make it so. As the dust settles we realise Philip Hammond’s Budget did pull off one neat trick – it united both sides of the political divide. Both agreed there wasn’t much in it. The reasons, naturally, were different. On the government’s side it was because it kept the car between the hedges, steady as she goes, no surprises. And there’s a promised land of a £15bn bounty –…

School ended on my 15th birthday. I was sent to the youth employment officer, who got me a job as an electrician’s mate on a building site, but I never saw a wire, I just bled pipes. I thought, fuck that, this is plumbing. By 16, I was working in a sheet metalwork factory in South Acton. Calling it a factory is a bit much, it was more like an asbestos shed with 20 blokes turning out early computer cabinets, which were as big as tanks. They were some of my happiest days. Some guys were just out of Malaya and Korea, two wars we often forget about. The singing, laughter and camaraderie was so much fun, even though it was hard graft. Those teenage years were full of angst,…

WE'RE IN DIFFERENT WORLDS Paula is a visual artist working with mixed media on paper who draws a lot of inspiration from so-called “outsider art”. “I am particularly interested in expressing vulnerable states of mind,” she says. “My own, other people’s and the vulnerability I see in nature. My work is often layered, revealing and concealing. I’m also interested in invisibility and what is perceived beauty and imperfections.” Street Art is created by people who are marginalised. Contact street.lights@bigissue.com to see your art here. To see more and buy prints: bigissueshop.com At least half the profit goes to the artist.…

01 Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K Massie No one is better than Massie at explaining the grand sweeping scope of the era. First published in 1967, his gimlet eye for detail still stands the test of time. I first read Nicholas and Alexandra on the way to Australia and did not sleep all the way. 02 The Romanovs 1613-1918 by Simon Sebag Montefiore This is the intensely readable, entertaining and fabulously researched 300-year-long history of the Romanovs. From Michael I to Nicholas II, their epic rise, their riches, their loves, their hubris and their inevitable fall are all grippingly told. 03 Four Sisters: The lost lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses by Helen Rappaport A fantastic book that helps humanise the Grand Duchesses. Often forgotten in the tragic history…

The female kick-assery going down in Hollywood at the moment is mostly deeply boring – films made with the reasoning that if you have a woman doing James Bond in heels it counts as feminism. Well it doesn’t. Now, with a masterclass in how to get it right, here’s director Steve McQueen adapting Lynda La Plante’s 1983 TV drama into the year’s best thriller. Interestingly, McQueen has said he identified with the women on screen when he first saw the original on the telly aged 13 – it's about a group of women who turn to a life of crime when their husbands get killed in a robbery. No one suspects them because, well, they’re women. As a young black kid McQueen was repeatedly told at school that he wouldn’t…

For weeks we have been asking you to tell us how libraries give you the crucial access to the cultural capital and the services skills to get on in life. You responded in your droves to our campaign to save Britain’s libraries. And we delivered those experiences to the ministers who hold the future of libraries in their hands. Big Issue founder Lord John Bird – joined by CILIP, the British Library and Arts Council England – handed the Public Libraries: The Case for Support report to libraries minister Michael Ellis and local government minister Rishi Sunak last week. The hard-won Westminster roundtable meeting was a follow up to July’s discussions on a sustainable funding model to ensure future generations have access to libraries. We cannot afford to lose these…

I have been preaching yīn and yáng lately, or utilising the symbol of yīn and yáng. That is, two parts of a circle, not divided by a straight line, but complementing and ftting into each other. Like two bodies or spirits, perhaps even smoke, dancing in unity. I'm struck by the yīn and yáng symbol because it’s where my own thinking is taking me. But probably not in the traditional use of the concept (dark, bright; negative, positive; disorder, order). To me, yīn and the yáng are today and tomorrow. Yīn being today, and yáng being tomorrow. Today being our work here and now in the crises and emergencies of the present. We have to produce better ways of dealing with the crisis that surrounds us. People living on the…

Even if the age of austerity is over, as the government tentatively claims, there still remains a vast amount of damage repair to be done. A new book, Invisible Britain: Portraits of Hope and Resilience, collects images, including these, from photographers who toured the UK to document marginalised and overlooked communities. Coinciding with its launch there will be a series of panel discussions around the country. CAPITAL CITY Most photographs in Invisible Britain are portraits of people but Alessia Gammarota’s image contrasts London as densely populated city and hub of high finance. While the £30m-£50m flats in the Shard remain unsold and unoccupied, many of the city’s social housing units – such as the Cotton Gardens estate in Kennington (foreground) have been neglected or sold. Invisible Britain: Portraits of Hope…

We all know from high school history that shellshock was frst identifed during World War 1. But what fewer people might realise is how, over the last 100 years, repeated failures to learn the lessons of the past – and wilful determination to ignore them – have created flood after flood of mental illness. After every major conflict the military brushed psychiatric trauma under the carpet, leaving veterans without support and inflicting a huge cost on society as a whole. And, as an incredibly moving and shocking new BBC documentary shows, far from consigned to warfare of the past, this battle is leaving growing numbers of casualties across Britain today. In World War 1’s Secret Shame: Shell Shock, Dan Snow traces the history of what we now know as PTSD…

Despite the flood of visual stimuli we are subjected to every day, certain images persist, losing none of their power to move and engage us. Pablo Picasso’s Guernica is one of these. When first invited to write a book about it I was initially a little reluctant: after all some of the greatest art historians of recent times had done so already and their conclusions contradict each other in ways that only add to its mystery. However I soon found myself gripped by its story, which has strong resonances with our own times. Picasso was inspired to paint Guernica by a specific event during the Spanish Civil War, the carpet-bombing of the undefended Basque town of Gernika on April 26, 1937 by the Condor Legion of…

I recently learned that Jeff Goldblum is a highly accomplished jazz pianist who has held down semi-regular low-key cocktail lounge residencies in Pittsburgh and LA since he was a kid, and my mind was blown. The secret to the success of one of the most titanium-clad likeable actors in all of actordom – his trademark, uhm, irregular, uhm, speech patterns, his always faintly knowing air, his spectacular spectacle-wearing? It’s jazz, of course! In that same way that the Force in Star Wars is a mythical energy that surrounds us and penetrates us and binds the galaxy together, such is jazz for Jeff Goldblum. As he finally releases his debut jazz album The Capital Studios Sessions I’ve re-examined Goldblum’s career to date through the prism of jazz, and suddenly it all…

I trust Mark Kermode for two reasons – The Ninth Configuration and Dougal and the Blue Cat . You are more likely to be aware of the Dougal movie than The Ninth Configuration. It is a magnificent feature-length display of Eric Thompson’s imagination, the man who scripted the French children’s series The Magic Roundabout by watching the original in silence and working out what plot he could attach to the onscreen antics. Who would expect the line “I bet this never happened to Sergei Eisenstein” to crop up in a work considered to be most suitable for the under-fives. The Ninth Configuration, written and directed by The Exorcist’s William Peter Blatty, and set in an asylum for military men who have suffered breakdowns,…

Our guide this week: Csaba Setet, 56, was born in Hungary. He came to Copenhagen as a child and knows the city better than anyone because he has been homeless and living on the streets just about all of his adult life. He is a vendor of Danish street paper Hus Forbi and also a tour guide with Gadens stemmer (Voices from the street). 01 My favourite cafe Operaen (the Opera), Pusher Street, Christiania The cafe is well known and has many visitors. There is no alcohol, which is nice. The coffee and tea is very good as are the bottled fruit juices. You can play chess, backgammon and pool and the garden is nice when the sun is shining. Be aware the place can be crowded. While you are…