Arts Book Review: Art, Annotated by DK The book’s unique strengths lies in its annotations, which decipher the often-obscure language of visual art. Providing readers with the tools to understand each artist’s technique and intent. Turning appreciation into active participation, making even the most intricate or elusive works accessible. By Eric Page • 3 min read
Arts BOOK REVIEW: ‘DRAG: A British History’ by Jacob Bloomfield The book takes us by the manicured gloved hand and leads us, via clubs, shows, scandals, politics, intrigue, to some rather delicious Queer individuals and the way they used Drag to succeed and flourish on stage By Eric Page • 4 min read
Arts BOOK REVIEW: The Queer Mental Health Workbook by Brendan J Dunlop This book is empowering and reassuring, there’s a lot of ‘self-help’ books out there, but this is a rather special and unique book offering compassionate insight to the LGBTQ/Queer community, and it’s workbook style with clear and easy to follow directed recommendations will go a long way to help y By Eric Page • 3 min read
Arts BOOK REVIEW: The Enemy Within by Adam Macqueen The Enemy Within’ is a cracking read,a gripping thriller and complex real Queer love story, of men struggling to be honest and real enough to grab love when it’s there, an adventure racked with radical threat and emotional trauma, a tender self-realisation story as Alex matures and understands himse By Eric Page • 6 min read
Arts FIREBIRD filmmakers, Peeter Rebane and Tom Prior, launch campaign to publish memoirs of the real Sergey Fetisov The creative team behind FIREBIRD, 2022’s hit indie LGBTQ+ romance drama, announce Kickstarter campaign to release the never-before-seen English language translation of Firebird: The Story of Roman, the memoir by Sergey Fetisov that inspired the film. By Graham Robson • 3 min read
Arts Back to Books fundraising to sustain their radical and representative bookselling Back to Books is a Digbeth-based independent bookshop that first began in May 2019, when its founder Alexia was struggling to find an independent bookshop in her new home city of Birmingham. By Catherine Muxworthy • 2 min read
Arts REVIEW: Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune It’s about people finding ways to make the most of the time they have, and finding the power to enable themselves to change, and love being worth the risk of huge change. Throw in a ghost doggy, an impish spectral Grandad and a rather swish tearoom at the end of existence and this is an uplifting, By Eric Page • 2 min read
Arts REVIEW: ‘In the Dream House’ by Carmen Maria Machado The book is astounding, but with its clarion call of authentic experience it shows us the author not only growing stronger in a world determined to undermine and destroy, but learning, navigating and finally breaking free to document, share and convince. Machado redefines what a memoir can be and gi By Eric Page • 2 min read
Arts REVIEW: Children of the Sun Max Schaefer An explicit exploration of 1980s south London gay neo Nazi’s mixed in with the head-spinning occult narratives and gay narrators and the authors rather charming seriously precise documenting of Skin Head fashions. A heady brew. By Eric Page • 1 min read
Arts REVIEW: BI THE WAY by Lois Shearing Shearing examines difficult subjects with a deft clarity of purpose, affirming and platforming real people’s experience throughout. It’s an engaging read, and if your head it turned by all sorts of folk, and your pulse quickened then the book supports an honest self-exploration of what that can mean By Eric Page • 2 min read
Arts Review: Nen and the lonely Fisherman: Ian Eagleton & James Mayhew Eric Page is delighted by this lovely book for the younger reader with a strong diversity theme and a subtle intelligent ecological one also woven into the story By Eric Page • 1 min read
Arts Review: Top to Bottom : Finlay Games Eric Page is seduced by this witty testimony to transformation and learning to love your body and the changes and opportunity’s that change can provide By Eric Page • 1 min read
