Search results for ""The Westbourne Press""

Smashing It celebrates the exceptional works and words of 31 leading working-class artists in Britain. Featuring writing, lyrics and images by Wiley, Maxine Peake, Malorie Blackman, Riz Ahmed and many more, it also includes reflections from artists on how class has impacted their working lives. Come behind the scenes to find out how they overcame obstacles - from the financial to the philosophical - to forge careers in the arts and get inspiration to launch your own project. Smashing It empowers those who will be a part of tomorrow's bigger picture. Contributors: Riz Ahmed, Sabeena Akhtar, Travis Alabanza, Anthony Anaxagorou, Raymond Antrobus, Malorie Blackman, Michaela Coel, Emma Dennis-Edwards, Maureen Duffy, Jenni Fagan, Marvell Fayose, Salena Godden, Hassan Hajjaj, Omar Hamdi, Kerry Hudson, Rabiah Hussain, Fran Lock, David Loumgair, Lisa Luxx, Paul McVeigh, Bridget Minamore, Courttia Newland, Aakash Odedra, Maxine Peake, Rebecca Strickson, Chimene Suleyman, Joelle Taylor, Monsay Whitney, Wiley, Madani Younis

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The urge to censor is as old as the urge to speak. From the first Chinese emperor's wholesale elimination of books to the Vatican's suppression of pornography from its own collection, and on to the attack on Charlie Hebdo and the advent of Internet troll armies, words, images and ideas have always been hunted down by those trying to suppress them. In this compelling account, Eric Berkowitz reveals why and how humanity has, from the beginning, sought to silence itself. Ranging from the absurd - such as Henry VIII's decree of death for anyone who 'imagined' his demise - to claims by American slave owners that abolitionist literature should be supressed because it hurt their feelings, Berkowitz takes the reader on an unruly ride through history, highlighting the use of censorship to reinforce class, race and gender privilege and guard against offence. Elucidating phrases like 'fake news' and 'hate speech', Dangerous Ideas exposes the dangers of erasing history, how censorship has shaped our modern society and what forms it is taking today - and to what disturbing effects.

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As seen in the major Netflix documentary `Mercury 13' In 1961, Wally Funk was among the Mercury 13, the first group of American pilots to pass the `Woman in Space' programme. Wally sailed through a series of rigorous physical and mental tests, with one of her scores beating all the male Mercury 7 astronauts', including John Glenn's, the first American in orbit. But just one week before the final phase of training, the programme was abruptly cancelled. A combination of politics and prejudice meant that none of the women ever flew into space. Undeterred, Wally went on to become America's first female aviation safety inspector, though her dream of being an astronaut never dimmed. In this offbeat odyssey, journalist and fellow space enthusiast Sue Nelson joins Wally, now approaching her eightieth birthday, as she races to make her own giant leap before it's too late. Covering their travels across the United States and Europe - taking in NASA's mission control in Houston, the European Space Agency's HQ in Paris and Spaceport America in New Mexico, where Wally's ride into space awaits - this is a uniquely intimate and entertaining portrait of a true aviation trailblazer.

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Birds have inspired people since the dawn of time. They are the notes behind Mozart's genius, the colours behind Audubon's art and ballet's swansong. In The Birds They Sang, Stanislaw Lubienski sheds light on some of history's most meaningful bird and human interactions, from historical bird watchers in a German POW camp, to Billy and Kes in A Kestrel for a Knave. He muses on what exactly Hitchcock's birds had in mind, and reveals the true story behind the real James Bond. Undiscouraged by damp, discomfort and a reed bunting's curse, Lubienski bears witness to the difficulties birds face today as people fail to accommodate them in rapidly changing times. A soaring exploration of our fascination with birds, The Birds They Sang opens a vast realm of astonishing sounds, colours and meanings - a complete world in which we humans are never alone.

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Revolutionary, reflective and romantic, I Am Nobody's Nigger is the powerful debut collection by one of the UK's finest emerging poets. Exploring race, identity and sexuality, Dean Atta shares his perspective on family, friendship, relationships and London life, from riots to one-night stands.

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Geoff Nicholson has been walking his whole life. Part urban explorer, part psychogeographer, rambler and flaneur, wherever he is and wherever he goes in the world, he walks and writes about what he sees and feels. Here he reflects on the nature of walking, why we do it, how it benefits us and, in some cases, how it damages and even destroys us. Walking is seldom a safe and benign activity. People injure themselves while walking; people fall, get lost, they get attacked by people and by animals; some die while walking. Geoff's recent diagnosis with a rare, incurable form of cancer has made him all too aware of his own mortality. Geoff vows to continue to walk for as long as he can, although he knows that sooner or later there will be a last step, a last excursion, a final drift, for him just as there is for everybody else. This moving, vital book about walking and mortality describes Geoff's own walks and relates them to the walks of others - to the walking of street photographers such as Gary Winogrand, Diane Arbus and Daido Moriyama; artists Richard Long, John Baldessari, Sophie Calle; and writers, Jose Luis Borges, Kathy Acker, Teju Cole, Lauren Elkin and Virginia Woolf.

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London's Overthrow is a potent polemic describing the capital in a time of austerity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Award-winning author and essayist China Mieville cuts through the hyperbole of our politicians to present a view from ordinary London - of the inequality, oppression and indignity and the hidden, subversive sentiment pervading throughout our streets.

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Adapted into the Channel 4 documentary 'Sex: My British Job' by Nick Broomfield. Ming and Beata share neither the same language nor cultural background, yet their stories are remarkably similar. Both are single mothers in their thirties and both came to Britain in search of a new life: Ming from China and Beata from Poland. Neither imagined that their journey would end in a British brothel. In this chilling expose, investigative journalist Hsiao-Hung Pai works undercover as a housekeeper in a brothel and unveils the terrible reality of the British sex trade. Workers are trapped and controlled - the lack of freedoms this invisible strait of society suffers is both shocking and scandalous and at odds with the idea of a modern Britain in the twenty-first century.

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Sex and Punishment tells the story of the struggle throughout millennia to regulate the most powerful engine of human behaviour: sex. From the savage impalement of an Ancient Mesopotamian adulteress to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde for `gross indecency’ in 1895, Eric Berkowitz evokes the entire sweep of Western sex law. The cast of Sex and Punishment is as varied as the forms taken by human desire itself: royal mistresses, gay charioteers, medieval transvestites, lonely goat-lovers, prostitutes of all stripes and London rent boys. Each of them had forbidden sex, and each was judged – and justice, as Berkowitz shows – rarely had anything to do with it.

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How are women supposed to make sense of the world today? Women have never had more freedom - yet questions of inequality persist from the bedroom to the boardroom. A quarter of a century after the publication of her seminal text, Misogynies, Joan Smith looks at what women have achieved - and the price they've paid for it. From spiteful media campaigns and a justice system that allows rapists to go free, to domestic violence, 'honour crimes' and sex-trafficking, Smith shows that womanhating has assumed new and sinister forms. Smith celebrates the fact that the female eunuch has become the public woman, but argues that we're living in an increasingly hostile world. A call to arms, The Public Woman sets out what we're up against - and how to fight back.

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South Asians have lived in Britain for centuries. From the first trade conducted between the two nations along the Silk Route to the adoption of Chicken Tikka Masala as a national dish, the ongoing mutual exchange of cultures continues to flourish today. Asian Britain vividly charts Britain's process of coming to terms with the historic realities of its culturally diverse past and present. This extraordinary photographic history draws upon culture, film, music, the military, business, the suffragist movement and the different phases of historic settlement of Asian migrants from the subcontinent, the Caribbean and East Africa. Personalities from the arts, business, politics and sport appear alongside the pioneers - the first female law student at Oxford, the first Indian RAF pilots, the first Asian MP - and of equal significance are the experiences and history of the ordinary immigrants.

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With the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, warnings about a 'new Cold War' proliferated. In fact, argues Gilbert Achcar in this timely new study, the Cold War has been ongoing since the turn of the century. Racing to solidify its position in the 1990s as the last remaining superpower, the US alienated Russia and China, pushing them closer and rebooting the 'old' Cold War with disastrous implications. Vladimir Putin's consequent rise and imperialist reinvention, along with Xi Jinping's own ascendancy and increasingly autocratic tendencies, would, respectively, culminate in the murderous invasion of Ukraine and mounting tensions over Taiwan and trade. Was all this inevitable? Will these three world powers' permanent readiness to war write the story of the twenty-first century? What comes after Ukraine? What might the contours of a more peaceful world look like? These questions and many others are addressed in this essential book by one of the most astute and seasoned analysts of international relations.

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This is not a manifesto against men in general. Nor is it a manifesto against Arab men in particular. It is, however, a howl in the face of a particular species of men: the macho species, Supermen, as they like to envision themselves. But Superman is a lie. In this explosive sequel to I Killed Scheherazade, Joumana Haddad examines the patriarchal system that continues to dominate in the Arab world and beyond. From monotheist religions and the concept of marriage to institutionalised machismo and widespread double standards, Joumana reflects upon the vital need for a new masculinity in these times of revolution and change in the Middle East.

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