About this issue: Overview
Hull’s year as UK City of Culture kicks off this week – a 12 month festival of arts and more that has already begun to boost the city’s profile. We talk to the organisers about how they put the programme together and what it promises. And Hull Big Issue North vendor Macca – our cover star – writes about the best things his beloved city has to offer.
It was only as he contemplated suicide on a Sheffield bridge that successful businessman Adam Shaw got a glimpse of what it might be like to live without the OCD that had plagued his life. And from that last-ditch moment of clarity he found a way to get better and is now running a charity that helps other sufferers. It’s the remarkable latest instalment in our series The Way I Work.
Part two in our set of author recommendations finds leading writers, from Jenni Murray to Doug Johnstone and Sarah Bakewell, telling us about their favourite books of last year. Together, the list of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and children’s books makes a formidable and entertaining reading list.
On the arts and entertainment pages, there’s a preview of Cathy at Sheffield’s Crucible, a remake of Cathy Come Home, Ken Loach’s moving and hugely influential work about homelessness from the 1960s.
In news you’ll find out about efforts to revitalise coastal towns like Blackpool and Scarborough with a return to the sea, and the blind Manchester patients who are about the receive bionic eyes in a medical breakthrough.
There’s also the best quotes from last year’s Letter to my Younger Self features, crossword, Sudoku – and the chance to win Big Issue North merchandise.
