2025 Cultural Highlights: Music
As the year draws to a close, rs21 members review their music highlights of 2025
2025 Cultural Highlights
As the year draws to a close, rs21 members review their cultural highlights of 2025
Review | Emergency Exits exhibition
The Imperial War Museum’s ‘Emergency Exits’ explores Britain’s violent retreat from empire and the brutality of colonial rule
Review | I Swear
Colin Revolting reviews I Swear, a film about the life of Tourette syndrome campaigner John Davidson
Review | The Starmer symptom
Pat Stack reviews Mark Perryman’s essay collection on Starmer’s betrayals and Labour’s deepening crisis
Review | Enemy Feminisms
Sophie Lewis’ new book is a mini-encyclopaedia of TERFs, policewomen and girlbosses.
Review | The Penguin Lessons
A review of Steve Coogan’s new film which is set in the context of 1970s Argentina under the repression of the military junta
Review | Hard Graft
Kika Hendry reviews the Wellcome Collection’s exhibition Hard Graft, which explores the relationship between work and health tracing through histories of exploitation, oppression and resistance.
Review | Disaster Nationalism
Richard Seymour’s recent book Disaster Nationalism can help us understand what’s happening as Trump’s second term accelerates the growth of the far right internationally.
Review | One hundred years of solitude
A review of the new film version of Gabriel García Márquez’s wonderful novel ‘One hundred years of solitude’, first published in 1967
Review | Soundtrack to a coup d’etat
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat uses jazz and contemporary voices to expose how Belgium and the US undermined the newly independent Democratic Republic of the Congo
Review | Burnout
Samuel Kelly reviews Hannah Proctor’s Burnout, a timely exploration of the emotional toll of political struggle, offering ways to navigate despair and sustain hope in our movements.
Review | Overshoot: How the world surrendered to climate breakdown
Malm and Carton’s revolutionary call to climate action
Review | Union
Grace Linden reviews a recent production of Max Wilkinson’s play Union, directed by Wiebke Green, at the Arcola Theatre in Hackney. Is it useful to construct narratives from individual moral responsibility when discussing gentrification? We all need a home; we’re all (too) willing to take on the options offered by a system that exploits our […]
Glass Onion – foolishly transparent
Maurice Ramboz reviews Glass Onion, asking what the film’s titular metaphor tells us about capitalist ideology.
The scale of Britain’s housing crisis
Danny Schultz reviews a recent work exploring the scale of exploitative landlordism in Britain, finding an indictment of British capitalism and an urgent call for renter organising.
‘Play for Today’: groundbreaking and still relevant
Simon Donohoe reflects on the groundbreaking TV series ‘Play for Today’, re-released this year.
London in revolt – revisiting the English Civil War
Andrew Stone looks at a new history of the origins of the English Civil Wars, finding an engaging account of the class character of the process which ultimately saw Charles I executed. London may not have the same revolutionary reputation of Paris or St Petersburg, but in this new account of the outbreak of the […]
The deviant law student
In a piece originally published in Socialist Lawyer, Kate Bradley reviews the Critical Legal Pocketbook, and finds it a useful corrective to capitalist legal education, perfect for socialists who study and work in law. There are many reasons why socialists may be attracted to the legal profession. Though it is an embattled terrain dominated by […]
Municipal politics and the revolutionary left
Danny Schultz reviews Paint Your Town Red, by Matthew Brown and Rhian E Jones, finding an interesting discussion of the possibilities of radical local politics.
Capitalism, debt and feminism
Kate Bradley reviews A Feminist Reading of Debt, finding an insightful account of the relationship between debt, gender, and capitalism, as well as examples of how to fight back against debt.
Revolutionary Reads – What books got us through 2021?
We asked rs21 members what they’ve been reading in 2021, whether new works of revolutionary theory, fiction, or old classics. These were some of the examples our members had. James B – Psychoanalysis and Revolution (2021) Pyschoanalysis and Revolution argues for the relevancy of psychoanalysis as a tool for those of us involved in liberatory […]
Review | Red Metropolis
Danny Schultz reviews Red Metropolis, the latest work by acclaimed political thinker and architectural critic Owen Hatherley. Schultz argues it provides an insightful history of radicalism within London, yet falls short in considering the importance of the working class struggles which make municipal socialism possible. Owen Hatherley, Red Metropolis: Socialism and the Government of London […]