UNSUNG at the British Art Fair by Jessica Wood

TheDrouth
16th August 2025
Published by TheDrouth

UNSUNG at the British Art Fair by Jessica Wood

Not so much a Salon des Refuses or a Rogues Gallery as the unsung heroes who made the scene what it was? Jessica Wood previews and examines the work in the Unsung exhibition to be held at the British Art Fair 2025, and attempts to understand and rationalise why these artists may have remained outside the limelight.
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4th April 2025
Published by TheDrouth

trump by OWEN DUDLEY EDWARDS

Owen Dudley Edwards rewrites the understanding of genre and sees satire as a form of literary criticism. His knowledge of mid-twentieth century literature is both encyclopaedic and peculiar. Wodehouse, for example, is always an anomaly, but using his works as a handrail to guide us round the voids created by a current day fascist is weirdly novel.
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21st December 2024
Published by TheDrouth

THE REMAKING OF THE PRESIDENT 2024: A Study in Acting by Owen Dudley Edwards

As an historian of American politics, who followed John F Kennedy round the USA on his election campaign in the 60s, is there a writer with a longer view of the Presidency than Irishman Owen Dudley Edwards? - It takes a bit of wit too, to be wider than the current President-Elect. Here is the perennial Edwards, as always, delivering more - as Marx said of Lincoln - than he promised.
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13th December 2024
Published by TheDrouth

DELIGHTFUL FUN – A Cedric Price Thinkbelt for Our Times reviewed by Bruce Peter

Conceptual and provocative, but always with social conscience, the massive influence of Cedric Price as an architect and visionary of the new from his heydey in the 60s and 70s is seen not only in the host of unfinished and unbuilt ideas he left behind, but also in the massive pieces of fun civic kit others built under that influence, including the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the London Eye. Bruce Peter reviews an exhibition where you can catch up with the ideas and personality of the great maverick Price, and declares it '...elegantly curated by Ana Bonet Miro, Martin Brown and Maria Martinez Sanchez with design by Luca Brunelli.'
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8th June 2024
Published by TheDrouth

QUESTS FOR ANNIHILATION by Owen Dudley Edwards

What has been the scope of bigotry, racism, oppression and prejudice? Owen Dudley Edwards telescopes a whole history of the entanglement of those evils with the struggle for freedom, justice and truth into a compassionate and humane reading (and most importantly, an Irish reading) of the cornering and silencing of Diane Abbott, who was the first ever black woman elected to the Westminster Parliament.
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21st February 2024
Published by TheDrouth

Made in Scotland:
Studies in Popular Music
Frith, Cloonan & Williamson
reviewed by Sheena Macdonald

A history of seventy years of popular music in Scotland by Simon Frith, Martin Cloonan and John Williamson is fascinating and comprehensive in its introduction to the story , writes Sheena Macdonald in review.
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7th February 2024
Published by TheDrouth

SENSE AND SENSITIVITY:
Killing History
Owen Dudley Edwards

Putting the writing and rewriting of state affairs by politicians in a long and broadly detailed context, Owen Dudley Edwards wonders if 'The self-destruction of the would-be partisan is becoming a literary form in UK political life'? Reviews of new books by Theresa May, Chris Bryant and Rory Stewart.
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2nd November 2023
Published by TheDrouth

LAOCOON AND LOSS
by
Murdo Macdonald

From Classical Antiquity through Michelangelo to Verlaine, via Godard and Tarkovsky and an essay-load of other makers, Murdo Macdonald shows us how the whole gang of western clever clogs in turn feel the pain of Laocoon - for if art shows us anything it is this: that nothing exists for sure, except the torture of the knowledge that is so, and will be so forever.
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