Innholdsfortegnelse for 5/24/2021 i The Big Issue

Readers responsed to the choices… Titus Kojder Brownsville Girl at number one! Good list! @wingedmarsupial What? No room for When the Night Comes Falling From the Sky (Alternate Take) from Bootleg Series Vol 1-3? @TruesdellJYoung This is a great list, though in my opinion Emotionally Yours has no business among such august company (but I’m perfectly happy to go along with the out-of-the-box inclusion of Diamonds & Rust). Insightful & wide-ranging. I knew it was going to be a fun read when it started with Tweeter and The Monkey Man. Tom Joens The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar and Clean Cut Kid are two Dylan songs that don’t get their due! @NaDawson1979 Good to see Born in Time getting some love. Wendell Evans What, no Gates of Eden? @Alastair_J_Reid…

Lockdown brought out the best and worst in people. For Phil Heckels from Worthing, his best intentions were equalled only by his awful artistic skills. During lockdown, attempting to encourage his six-year-old son Sam to pick up some pencils instead of playing computer games, Heckels decided to draw their dog Nala. The result was rubbish – so bad in fact Heckels shared it on Facebook, jokily offering his services: “Just send me a photo and I can produce a unique and wonderful piece of art that will grace any home and make the memories of your furry friends last a lifetime.” Amazingly, he got six commissions straight away. Heckels – who gave himself a pretentious sounding nom de plume, Hercule Van Wolfwinkle – explains: “Two days later my portrait requests…

What’s the difference between history and historical drama? The line between the two is thin and porous. There’s a lot of drama in history, and lot of history in drama. And many of our most cherished images of British history actually come from the stage and screen, rather than life itself. King Richard III offering his kingdom for a horse at Bosworth? That’s Shakespeare. A fat Tudor king chucking chicken legs over his shoulder? That’s The Private Life of Henry VIII. William Wallace yelling “Freedom!” before he has his guts yanked out? Thanks for that, Mel Gibson’s Braveheart. For hundreds of years dramatists have mined the history books for inspiration – knowing there’s only one thing sexier than a good story. That’s a good true story. Yet dramatists are rarely…

The hit crime mystery Reservoir 13 confirmed that Nottingham novelist Jon McGregor knew his way around a gripping page-turner. But with Lean Fall Stand he takes on a more profound challenge; the language and thought processes of a brain in crisis. Field researchers Luke, Thomas and veteran guide Robert ‘Doc’ Wright are caught up in a perilous expedition in Antarctica. The third-person narrative which describes their plight is, like them, focused, lucid and concise. But when the men are separated and panic sets in, the prose begins to unravel, repeat, and lose its bearings, like an e e Cummings poem in which the words slip off the page. “He rawed the rum nubness of his face.” “He sat and the colour fall. Music.” This is is the literary version of…

Metal poles stuck out from the fabric at awkward angles. It looked like a giant spider that had been unceremoniously squashed. The landlord surveyed the marquee wreckage, shaking her head. Balancing the complimentary hot water bottle on my lap, I adjusted my hood. I had a seat in an actual pub (garden), and I was going to enjoy this glass of wine if it was the last thing I did. It’s wonderful to be journeying on this road out of lockdown, but in our excitement, we seem to have forgotten that there’s a reason our green and pleasant land doesn’t have a big tradition of outside dining. This may well have been one of the driest springs on record (really), but it’s also one of the windiest and coldest: the…

A hand up… Our sellers BUY the magazine for £1.50 and sell it on for £3, keeping the difference. Not a handout… Vendors earn a legitimate income, and gain valuable social and employability skills. With your support, we can continue to help them now and in the future. The right to citizenship... The Big Issue Foundation, our charitable arm, helps sellers to 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.…

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL VENDOR VENDORS Following a long lockdown, vendors in England, Scotland and Wales are back out selling the magazine. Please continue to support them. SUBSCRIPTIONS AND SHOPS Since the first lockdown in March last year, we have supported our vendors with more than £1m of financial assistance to make up for lost sales. We still need your help to make sure we can continue to support them through uncertain times. HOW YOU CAN HELP 1. If your local vendor is selling The Big Issue, please buy from them. Vendors buy magazines for £1.50 and sell for £3, keeping the difference and working their way out of poverty. 2. If you cannot buy from a vendor, subscriptions to the magazine are available on a three, six or 12-month basis…

Remember when Donald Trump threatened to ban TikTok in the US? That feels like a very long time from now. But it was less than a year ago. Trump was angry at the growing power and influence of the Chinese and decided that banning the Chinese-owned TikTok would show them what’s what. There were moves to find an American buyer for the app, but in the end the ban was ruled unlawful by a federal judge and the story passed. It turns out that the move against TikTok came from Nick Clegg. The former deputy PM is now vice president of global affairs at Facebook. When Mark Zuckerberg was looking for a way to counter TikTok’s rise it was, reports The Sunday Times, “a Nick-inspired thing” to have Zuckerberg use…

In May 2020, George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin, a serving police officer. The killing shocked the world and galvanised the Black Lives Matter movement. Change is coming but it is long overdue. In May 1921, the worst incident of racial violence in America took place in Tulsa. The Greenwood district of the city was known as the Black Wall Street, its destruction likened to Kristallnacht. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, died. Only now, nearing the 100th anniversary, is its story being told. Scott Ellsworth is a historian leading efforts next month to exhume unmarked graves of victims. He explains why we need to remember. The Big Issue: What was the Greenwood district of Tulsa like before the events of late May 1921? Scott Ellsworth: Greenwood was an incredibly vibrant community,…

In 2016, I completed the last of five active service tours of Afghanistan with the British Army. As a soldier in the 2nd Battalion, the Royal Gurkha Rifles, I was in the front line of the fighting in Helmand Province between 2006 and 2014. I was also, in 2016, deployed in the Afghan capital, Kabul. On dangerous resupply missions and offensive patrols, we Gurkhas came under frequent attack from Taliban fighters and other insurgents. None of us will ever forget what we went through together. It formed a bond of brotherhood that nothing and no one can break – and I tell the story of it here in Gurkha Brotherhood. The book is my personal story about what it was like to serve worldwide, including those five active tours in…

letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk letters@bigissue.com Holy trinity I usually buy my Big Issue either in my local town of King’s Lynn or nearby city of Cambridge. I was, therefore delighted to see my ‘local Cambridge vendor’ featured in the 1457 – ‘We’re Back!’ Edition [April 12]. Page 25, bottom of! When buying my copy in Cambridge, Trinity Street, Eamonn Kelly and I often have a chat and laugh together, and I wish him well; I hope his worthwhile goals in life are fulfilled. Good luck, thanks, and all the best to the Big Issue vendors, here, there and everywhere! Andy Tyler, King’s Lynn Labouring badly The catastrophic local elections – stunned is not the word! How on earth had Labour become so detached from the very people it vows to…

The past, the present and the future are like threedifferent things. For instance like a hairbrush, a spinning top and a jar of marmalade. Or that’s what you would think if you spoke to any practising politician whose immediate, continuous and permanent job is to win an election. They are stuck in the present and can only think of the future if it in some ways solves the eternal problem that they may be given the big elbow at the next election. So you have this very pressing requirement if you are a full-time, elected professional politician. Your mind has to acclimatise to this very strange rearrangement of the world in a neurosis of feared rejection, in the same way that a youngster getting a job on a cross-channel ferry…

The first time I encountered God in my likeness was in the middle of a shack. Although I had read the New York Times bestseller by William P Young some years before, there was something shockingly wonderful about watching the big screen adaptation of The Shack. The film tells the story of a man who - after an unspeakable family tragedy - encounters God the form of three persons - the Holy Spirit depicted as an Asian woman, Jesus, a Middle Eastern man, and God the Father as a curvy black woman named ‘Papa’, played by Octavia Spencer. Despite a theology degree from Cambridge, in some ways it took a Hollywood film to help me shatter the illusion that I had been under all my life - that God was…

FILM What the 1999 London nail-bombings tell us about extremism today Nick Lowles INTERVIEW ‘It only took a few minutes to become the Doctor again’ Christopher Eccleston- MUSIC Open-air classical season is nearly upon us, so grab a brolly Claire Jackson STREET ART “Being in my sixties, everything hurts,” says David, who submits his artwork via the 240 Project, a London arts and health activity centre for people affected by homelessness and exclusion. “Especially in winter. Which is why I like to travel where the sun is kinder to me when I can. I speak French and Spanish thanks to my time in the Foreign Legion: communication is key to human harmony. “I have written poetry since I was 10 and learned to paint in prison, it was therapeutic. I…

01 Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel This book is insanely relevant. It’s about a flu pandemic that wipes out something like 95 per cent of the world. It turns the idea of the dystopian novel on its head, presenting a discussion of whether the ‘before’ was better than the ‘after’, or the ‘after’ is actually better than the ‘before’. 02 Parable of the Sower by Octavia E Butler This is a razor-sharp, searing appraisal of our own power structures in the present day, but through the eyes of a 15-year-old African-American girl in an imaginary world. 03 Ready Player One by Ernest Cline This book is just so much fun because it manages somehow to pull just about every single pop culture phenomenon from the 80s into this…

Ignorance is being weaponised again as politicians use the threadbare flag blanket of a culture war to cover up those unsightly protuberances of ineptitude and incompetence which their emperor’s new clothes failed to conceal. When museums and historical institutions have started to make more of an effort to highlight some of the less noble actions of the past concerning slavery, exploitation and exclusion it has been made clear that this is the wrong knowledge and must be discounted as a fever dream caused by Greta Thunberg or a similar teenage activist. Those who support the increase in enlightenment of the darker corners of our past will be accused of virtue signalling. Are you going to be on the right side of wrong history or the wrong side of right history?…

NEED HELP? Why not get together with other Big Issue readers on Twitter – @Biglssue Get the answers in next week’s mag! Good luck 1. St Machar’s Cathedral is a landmark in which Scottish city? 2. Which UK police procedural show ran for 88 episodes on the BBC between 1980 and 1985? 3. Which UK band’s drummers have included Alan White and Tony McCarroll? 4. Which BBC Radio presenter’s show features the popular quiz game Popmaster ? 5. In which year did former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher die? 6. On a dartboard, what number is directly opposite number one? 7. In Rugby Union, which country will the British Lions tour this summer? 8. Which is the common nickname of the state of California? 9. What is the name of…