Books & Periodicals #1

ENGLAND & SCOTLAND IN PROTEST 1975–78
by Phil Portus
(Cafe Royal Books)
Even the smallest change resulting from a protest march is a victory, as without them we surrender to the bullies. Cafe Royal Book latest publication reminds us that protest is timeless here  (Alan Rider)

NOVA SCOTIA HOUSE
by Charlie Porter
(Particular Books)
Charlie Porter wowed with 'What Artists Wear' - as he picked through the closets of artists you love for their look. Charlie got the details. With an exacting ability to connect work with wear, for his sighting of signs we don't see, so much so that Olivia Dean in the Guardian newspaper imagined Porter as a kind of "punk cousin to John Berger." I loved 'What Artists Wear' so much that I gave it away several times. Now we have Porter's debut novel. Nova Scotia House will be available on March 20th. A story of loss and grief, sex and love, and refusing to relinquish dreams, Charlie's publisher says. He said he would understand if it was too much for me, that I could leave him, that I was young, I should be living, I said to him, I am living. Johnny Grant faces stark life decisions. Seeking answers, he looks back to his relationship with Jerry Field. When they met, nearly thirty years ago, Johnny was 19, Jerry was 45. "Nova Scotia House takes us to the heart of a relationship, a community and an era. It is both a love story and a lament; bearing witness to the enduring pain of the AIDS pandemic and honouring the joys and creativity of queer life." Can't wait to be sad. (Ancient Champion)

SOLID BOND IN YOUR HEART
A People's History of The Jam
by Malcolm Wyatt
(Spenwood Books)
Solid Bond In Your Heart - An oral history of The Jam in the words of over 400 fans. Spenwood make unique books, collating the vivid memories of fans into what becomes a band history. Since not all memories will be of one era. They tend to stretch over many eras and who know when a song heard for the first time will make a fan of someone. Or a book for the matter. A book of fan memories can trace the entire arc of a career. With a foreword by Paul Weller, which is pretty cool in itself, and published on 17 May 2025, Solid Bond In Your Heart is a must for Jam fans. A 416 page limited edition hardback is available to order now. Early orders I understand will ship in mid-February. (Lee Paul)

SAYING DIRTY THINGS IN REGIONAL ACCENTS
by Neil Campbell
(Salt)
Saying Dirty Things in Regional Accents is the latest, greatest collection of fiction from Neil Campbell. Mostly, it is shorter and sharper than the great stuff Neil has published before. There's no mistaking a shiv driven through the ribs with this, a collection spares no one. The stories ping back to, change, and sometimes the lack of it. Sometime places familiar for slumming it are supplanted by slums in the sky. Often the characters aren't aware that their own story has moved on without them. Alright, so I would say I can't think of a Neil Campbell book I don't like, and he has been a great supporter of Outsideleft, sharing stories with us whenever we've asked. Saying Dirty Things in Regional Accents surpasses everything you've read this year so far. What is left of these people and their places? Who was it who said, "Nice place to visit, I wouldn't want to live there." (Ancient Champion)

THE HEART IS MEAT
An 80s Memoir
by Michael Backus
(Oil On Water Press)
The Heart is Meat by Michael Backus is a memoir from/for the 80s New York meat district, the one that was there way before it became a hipster haven. It's a love story for a time and a place where people weren't figuring out who they were, they knew all too well. It opens with 'Pigs Knuckles, Knee Pads and Abandoned Cars.' Poignant and hilarious. Lives you've looked away from.  It's the raciest paciest creative non-fiction — and if you're thinking a trip to get a few blocks across town to fetch a couple of boxes of pig knuckles is probably desultory enough or maybe way worse then your day is going to get, then you probably aren't working on a steady(ing) intake of heroin and speed. Everyone is not out of central casting. Everyone is out of a central casting dream. Chicks with dicks. “Baby, I bet your ass is tight!” A man’s voice trying to sound feminine, but not trying all that hard, more like he’s doing a Lauren Bacall impression. I keep walking, he/she walks beside. I don’t look but imagine there’s flopping going on mid and top. Tits AND a dick, Tex says, like it’s win win. I have the thought this is like approaching a mystical land where entry is gained only by solving a gatekeeper’s riddle. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you.” This line of inquiry is not unexpected and I’ve thought out what I might say. This guy or someone like him says the same thing when any market worker walks past. “But I’ve been assfucked so many goddamned times on this goddamned job, they’ve put in concrete tunnel supports.” The Heart is Meat will be published  by Oil On Water Press in May. It's a Ulysses for I don't know whomever needs a new Ulysses. Probably gonna get just as many backs up.  (LamontPaul)

OPENING LINE
An Affordable Anthology of Contemporary Poetry
by Aaron Kent (editor)
(Broken Sleep Books)
Broken Sleep are a working-class indie press. That little fact pricks up my ears. Opening Line runs with a strapline 'An affordable anthology of Contemporary Poetry'. And although walking around with the book sticking out from a back pocket chapbook style  with that emblazoned on the front might make you feel like you're back in your school blazer that felt felted before you'd worn it — unlike the fabrics what the rich kids got. I'm into it in a big way. Broken Sleep Books are clawing back culture. And they are making it look good while they do it. It's exciting. It's the greatest virtue signal on a cover since Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book. What helps to make it great is it is so beautifully handsome, I love the design, and it doesn't skimp on the quality of the writers inside. Hollie McNish and many other household names, even in my house. All for less than £4. Broken Sleep shows how it can be done. I'm excited. (Ancient Champion)

EXTERMINATE/REGENERATE: THE STORY OF DOCTOR WHO
by John Higgs
(W&N)
Renowned for his definitive titles about The KLF, William Blake, Timothy Leary, and way more besides. John Higgs is doing a Dr. Who book. Exterminate! Regenerate! Higgs investigates just why Who has endured over 60 years, and may be even more popular globally than ever. In his recent email broadcast he included a photograph of a passage from the book, in one paragraph, an exhibition, lions, a stately home, eccentric aristocrats, a collection of Hitler's own paintings — quietly put together by an aristocrat operating without boundaries — and a series of signs to the exhibition accidentally leading the visitors through the Hitler collection first... There are tons of Dr. Who books, and I have never looked at any of them, because I can never forget retreating behind the sofa at the first bars of Delia Derbyshires iconic music as a child.  Despite insisting I wanted to watch the show. John Higgs though, could make me a fan.
Exterminate! Regenerate!  will be out in April, watch out for John Higgs on tour. (DJ Fuzzyfelt)

LIE OF THE LAND
by Kerry Hadley-Pryce
(Salt)
Kerry Hadley-Pryce has just published  Lie of the Land, her fourth Black Country based novel with hip indie press, Salt. Acclaimed Birmingham writer Charlie Hill says ”Lie of the Land flits with expertly sinister intent between the shadows of the psychological thriller, the murder mystery and the ghost story."  We celebrated the release of this astonishing novel, with Kerry Hadley-Pryce Week in Outsideleft. Check it out, beginning here (LamontPaul)

TEACH YOUR DOG WELSH
by Anne Cakebread
(Y Lolfa)
After many years as a successful artist, illustrator and half of Peppermint Patti Promotions running gigs in Cardiff, Anne Cakebread and her partner moved to the coast of West Wales to open a dog friendly hotel in the beautiful estuary town of St Dogmaels. Anne was already a Welsh learner but didn't have the confidence to use it in public, however, after adopting a whippet that only knew Welsh and with her other dogs only understanding English, she had and idea which she took to a local publisher. To date Anne's Teach Your Dog (and, sometimes, Cat) books with their basic language and delightful illustrations have sold over 100,000 copies and become something of a publishing phenomenon. So if you fancy teaching your hound Welsh, North Wales or South Wales version, Maori, Japanese, Manx or German, these little books, published by Y Lolfa, are as great a companion as your pooch. (DJ Fuzzyfelt)

PAPER CUTS
How I Destroyed the Music Press and other Misadventures
by Ted Kessler
(White Rabbit)
Ted Kessler's Paper Cuts is subtitled 'How I Destroyed the Music Press and other Misadventures' and it is a great and rapid read of the worlds of Tedd Kessler and what was the British music press. It's difficult to even imagine now that at the British music papers, New Musical Express, Sounds, Melody Maker and Record Mirror sold hundred of thousands of copies each week. People who barely know what a CD is might rightly ask you why.  Ted began in fanzines by chance, talking to the same bands that talked to every fanzine. He loved music though and always wanted to hear more. He know how to make magazines work, that doesn't mean he wanted to do it like that. But the reasons why the music papers fell away, and then the periodicals after them, well Ted lays it all on the line. Everything from him and the world we knew. (Ancient Champion)

EVEN WHEN IT MAKES NO SENSE
The Broken Flag Story
by Steve Underwood
(Korm Plastics)
Broken Flag’s output won’t be for everyone as it often pushes against the boundaries of what music is and isn’t, and operates in the zone where art confronts entertainment. Read Alan Rider's full review here (Alan Rider)

WE ARE ALL PALESTINIANS
An Anthology in Solidarity with the People of Palestine
by Various
(Culture Matters)
We Are All Palestinians is a new poetry anthology from indie outsiders, Culture Matters. After production costs have been met, all money received will be given to the Medical Aid for Palestinians charity, to help build an effective, sustainable and locally led healthcare system for Palestinians. Since the current conflict began, Culture Matters has received and published many poems on their website."This is poetry in the face of horror." Culture Matters says, "It’s a poetry that investigates how it is we live in a world in which there is a shocking contrast: the normality of living here and the beyond-cruel normality of the mass killing in Gaza. While others have stayed silent, it’s a poetry that is not afraid to speak."  (LamontPaul)

AT WIT'S END
Cartoonists of The New Yorker
by Alen MacWeeney
(Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed Press)
The New Yorker is renowned for it's cartoonery. The magazine was founded a hundred years ago but didn't publish it's first photograph, I think, maybe, until the 1990s when they printed a full page image of Malcolm X by Richard Avedon, dating back to 1963. The New Yorker has amusingly and with sometimes acidic accuracy, depicted the shapeshifters of a shape shifting world in pen and ink for just about the entirety of its history. Alen McSweeney and Michael Maslin have combined in this new volume to photograph (McSweeney) and profile (Maslin) the New Yorker cartoonists. "New Yorker cartoonists have found a way to make complex topics digestible through lines, shades, and clever, witty captions."  McSweeney's work is acclaimed throughout the world of course and here it is easy to see why. Maslin profiles are sharp and concise. Together they draw the people with the pens in the private studios into the light. It's fascinating and fun for us nosey types to see them there, here. (Ancient Champion)