Innholdsfortegnelse for 12/20/2021 i The Big Issue

The last few years have been bleak for many in this country. Faced with rising levels of hardship, and with more and more people falling into poverty, The Big Issue has stepped up to do something about it. The social investment arm of The Big Issue Group is providing a safety net for some of our most vulnerable. During the pandemic, Big Issue Invest (BII) supported more than 180 organisations across the UK, with almost £40 million in investment, grants, help and advice for social enterprises and charities. “Driving everything we do, we will champion impact-first investing; we will push for social equality and we will provide a broader range of support that is ‘more than money’,” said Danyal Sattar, chief executive of BII. Besides cash injections, the organisation has…

In March, David Harewood’s BBC documentary Why Is Covid Killing People of Colour? looked at the racialised disparity of death rates from Covid. Maybe I Don’t Belong Here, his acclaimed memoir, was published in September. He’s currently performing at the Young Vic, playing right-wing white supremacist William F Buckley in new play Best of Enemies, and he also narrates Channel 4’s adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s festive children’s book, The Abominable Snow Baby. But he still found time to reflect on his busy 2021 for The Big Issue. “We live in an age when we’ve had fear rammed down our throats. Fear of other, fear of viruses, fear of refugees or people who look different. The Abominable Snow Baby takes those same fears and turns them on their head. It’s a…

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain By George Saunders (Bloomsbury, £12.99) ‘This book has changed the way I read forever’ When we come to choose the Big Issue Book of the Year, there are a number of factors we take into consideration. As every book lover knows, there are countless terrific, potentially life-changing books published every year and naming the ‘best’ is a fool’s errand. Unlike a few high-profile bestowers of book awards we don’t impose rules which give big-ticket publishers superior access to our shortlist, or limit smaller publishers to ‘entering’ only one or two titles (thus reducing the amount of books to arbitrate). In fact we do quite the contrary. The increasing media focus on celebrity authors and a handful of famous, sponsored book awards has…

READERS’ TWEETS @AnnieHayter Tice Cin’s Keeping the House (And Other Stories, £11.99) kept me up reading all night! This novel glistens with smoke, fried onions and under-table talking in the cafes of North London. It’s deliciously polyphonic and inside its cabbage-y heart shines a family of Turkish-Cypriot women trying to stay afloat. @RuthieSThomas I loved The Wolf Road by Richard Lambert (Everything with Words, £8.99) for its wonderful poetry and wit, and a really believable teenage narrator. @TheaPetrou Wretchedness by Andrzej Tichy, translated by Nichola Smalley (And Other Stories, £9.99). Its rhythms immerse the reader in the sensory experience of memory – visceral, addictive (and about addiction) and spoken through voices that linger. @ScotchEggkins Blackstoke by Rob Parker (Red Dog, £8.99). Just an incredibly dark, twisted horror story that really…

“Whether it was in India or whether it was in the States, I think The Matrix was a global shift in culture,” says Priyanka Chopra, movie star, India’s most followed woman on Instagram and, according to Time magazine, one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Chopra was 16 when the first Matrix was released. The daughter of doctors in the Indian army, she moved around a lot as a child, including living in America for a time in her teens. All the while, she was picking up the multicultural influences that are starting to make her an internationally bankable star. Back in India by 1999, she watched the cultural wave started by the Wachowskis’ sci-fi creation wash across the planet. “I remember Halloween being about The Matrix…

EASTON CHRISTIAN, 67 I met Christopher Eccleston the other day on my pitch. He’s a good man helping out The Big Issue I’ve been back selling The Big Issue since mid-November. I retired last year after The Big Issue helped me get my state pension. But they asked me this year if I wanted to come back for the Christmas run and I said: “Yeah no problem.” I’ve been selling The Big Issue since 2008 and everything I’ve got is from selling it. So I’m happy to be back helping out again – it’s like one hand washes the other, innit? They’ve helped me. If I wasn’t selling the magazine, I wouldn’t have got a flat. I wouldn’t have known all these people at The Big Issue and customers who…

Sanna Marin is a cool customer. It’s -7C in Helsinki and the light is dimming at Kesäranta, the idyllic waterside residence of the Finnish prime minister. However, the heat is rising for Marin – Finland has just recorded its first Omicron variant case a few hours before. But there is no sign of a crisis as she calmly sits down to talk to The Big Issue. Marin might not fit the stereotypical image of world leaders from days gone by. But she is symbolic of a sea change in Nordic countries. If Norway’s Erna Solberg hadn’t resigned in October, we would now be looking at a full sweep of female leaders across Scandinavia. Maybe that’s the first indication of where the UK is going wrong. Because clearly the Nordic countries…

ROGER TAYLOR Songwriter and drummer in Queen If I could have one last conversation with anyone in my life, it’s got to be Freddie. I was on my way to see him, less than half a mile away, when they rang me in my car and told me he’d gone. I just stopped the car on Kensington High Street, in a kind of shock. Because even when you know somebody is going to die, it’s still such a shock when they do. I wish I’d been there to give him support. That’s what he wanted. He liked his friends around. I think [the subsequent outpouring of love] has been terrific. He would have been so happy about it. But I just wish I got to say goodbye. IAN WRIGHT Football…

“I am so delighted to have my book honoured by The Big Issue – it feels like the equivalent of being liked by the most virtuous, big-hearted person one knows. I admire, so much, what The Big Issue does and would like to think that A Swim in a Pond in the Rain aspires to do a version of the same – that, like The Big Issue, it fosters a sense of connection between people and offers a similar reassurance that none of us is alone in this mad, sometimes scary adventure called life. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for (truly) making my year with this honour.”…

Chris Deerin I’m shamefully aware of all the books I haven’t found time to read this year. That said, I’ve no doubt The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen (Fitzcarraldo Editions, £12.99) would stand comparison with the very best of them. A fictionalised version of a real-life visit made by Benzion Netanyahu (the father of Benjamin) to the celebrated critic Harold Bloom in the 1950s, the novel is a picaresque fantasia. It fizzes with humour and snark and includes some truly wonderful set-pieces, while asking big questions about anti-semitism and Jewish anxiety about place and status. Cohen is a prodigious talent and this is his most successful and fully realised work so far. Dani Garavelli Of all the books I read this year, Gwendoline Riley’s My Phantoms (Granta, £12.99) has lingered longest…

Locavore provides vegboxes and emergency food parcels. Fink Street Food matches every meal sold with a donation to a soup kitchen. Community Shop provides discounted food; gave out 125,000 food parcels last year. Community Dental Services cares for patients in challenging circumstances. Change Please trains homeless people as baristas and supports on mental health, jobs and accommodation. Radiant Cleaners offers cleaning jobs to people facing barriers to employment. NEMI Teas is a tea company employing refugees. Commons Law helps marginalised clients navigate the criminal justice system. Breathe Arts Health Research uses creative programmes to improve wellbeing. Auticon employs autistic adults as IT consultants. Glyn Wylfa converts community buildings into work spaces. P3 offers supported housing, helping 28,500 people in the pandemic. Beam provides wifi dongles and laptops to homeless children.…

A well-deserved thank you  Happy Christmas to all the many heroic people holding this country together during the pandemic. THANK YOU to doctors, carers, nurses, delivery drivers, emergency service workers, teachers, posties, prison officers, vets, shop workers, and loads of others; many of whom aren’t getting the pay increases they manifestly deserve. Please don’t get too disillusioned by our self-serving, hypocritical Westminster government. You ARE appreciated by most of the public. Tony Rowe, Sudbury, Suffolk Inspired to reach new goals  In 2020 you published an article on fans supporting foodbanks. As a board member of the Cardiff City Supporters’ Trust, I was inspired to progress this with fellow board members and Cardiff City Football Club. On Saturday December 4, before our match with Sheffield United, we collected over 1,000 items…

There is the chance of a new Roy heir The season three finale threw up as many questions as answers – including whether Logan is chugging maca root smoothies to boost his sperm count in order to usurp his perennially disappointing offspring. Jesse Armstrong, Succession’s creator and lead writer, tells all. “We looked into products which allege that they can help with your sperm count, especially as you move on in years. I can confirm that is research for the show, not from my own life. “It’s a potent detail about someone thinking about mortality and so on, but it’s played for a comic beat in the episode. It’s a good example of what we do with the show. I think I know what happens but if someone makes a…

Anthony is a Big Issue vendor who has sold the magazine for several years now on the streets of London – his pitch is at South Kensington tube station. He says, “After hearing about the departure of our dear Street Cat Bob I decided to do this painting in his memory. I would like to dedicate this to all the Big Issue staff who have supported me in the past couple of years.” More of Anthony’s work can be seen in the Big Issue Shop or on Facebook The work on this page 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 of the profit goes to the artist.…

Dostoevsky in Love By Alex Christofi (Bloomsbury, £20) I knew a lot about the troubled life of Fyodor Dostoevsky before I read this biography – his rebellious youth, his last-minute reprieve from execution, his addictions and debts, his many extra-marital affairs. But Christofi’s hybrid approach to the story of a writer’s life is so original that prior knowledge of events does not detract from the pleasure of its reading. In an act of audacious imagination, he combines traditional factual accounts and quotes from personal letters with excerpts from Dostoevsky’s fiction which are (probably) based on the philosopher novelist’s personal experience. The standard third-person historical detailing is all there, but intercut with theatrical, often soliloquy-style paragraphs from his novels posing as intimate diary entries by Dostoevsky himself. Thus Christofi creates a…

It wouldn’t be Christmas without a bit of Home Alone and with the recent release of Home Sweet Home Alone there are now six instalments of the festive franchise to choose from. Sadly, they are not all of the same quality. I got about 20 minutes into the new film starring one of the Jojo Rabbit kids before deciding it was not my bag, thought Home Alone 3 was rather forgettable and the less said about the television movie outings from 2002 and 2012 the better. I guess I’m a sucker for the classics because no one does “resourceful child taking on low-level criminals” better than Macaulay Culkin did in the ’90s. But while most would favour his original 1990 outing as Kevin McCallister fending off Joe Pesci and Daniel…

Everything you’re going through, if it’s all fair game for later use in your work, then it has not been in vain Lin-Manuel Miranda was 21 the first time he saw Jonathan Larson’s autobiographical musical Tick , Tick…Boom! and he remembers every detail. The year was 2001, only a few weeks after 9/11. “It was my first time venturing downtown since the terrorist attacks,” Manuel says. “When I experienced that show at the Jane Street Theatre it hit me like a gale force wind. “This is what the message in the bottle was to me: that pretty girl sitting next to you who is a talented singer and actress? She’s not going to be a singer and actress when she grows up. She is going to get sick of the…