She was a politically committed photographer – “Everything is propaganda for what you believe in, isn’t it?” she rhetorically asked – hence the title of the wonderful exhibition at the Barbican and this superb book.   Sean Sheehan   The story of how Dorothea’s Lange’s drive home through California in […]

The literary establishment has always tended to turn its nose up at graphic novels but this has changed with the inclusion of one in the nominations for 2018’s Booker prize. The book is “Sabrina”, by the American author Nick Drnaso, and it tells a sorry tale about modern life.   […]

The writer Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) is most remembered in association with just one of his novels and the film version of it: “A clockwork orange”. But he wrote more than sixty books and – the subject matter of “The ink trade”, a constant stream of journalism. Writing was his raison […]

Some paperback novels work best when read at speed, to pass the time on an otherwise tedious journey when there is nothing more satisfying than immersing oneself completely in a delicious murder story.   Sean Sheehan    “Dark pines” is that kind of book and it features a reporter, Tuva […]

Wittgenstein was as astonishingly original in his thinking as he was in his personal life and a new publication makes this abundantly and endearingly clear.   Sean Sheehan   A two-volume “Portraits of Wittgenstein” was first published in 1999 but at a price that only libraries could afford. There is […]