Issue 1189

26 Jun 2017
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About this issue: Overview

Wonder Woman film editor Martin Walsh has an Oscar to his name and is much in demand in Hollywood. But he’s still a down to earth Mancunian, finds Saskia Murphy, with a surprisingly sardonic take on his painstaking craft.

Fifty years ago the Family Planning Act made the Pill freely available to women, giving them reproductive freedom and control. But now health data such as body temperature can be measured and recorded in such detail, is it information rather than hormones that will power the next era of family planning, asks Antonia Charlesworth.

This year’s Manchester International Festival is the city’s sixth celebration of new art but the first with a new artistic director. John McGrath tells Richard Smirke how he plans to stamp his signature on it with a rich but risky programme.

On the news pages, a report from Hull hostel the Crossings, where homeless people have made a musical tribute to victims of the Manchester terror attack, and from Cumbria, where there are fears that the Ministry of Defence plans to sell off cherished commons land into private hands.

In arts and entertainment, we preview an exhibition of work by Wyndham Lewis, the avant garde artist who made a point of provoking everyone he worked with, and there are reviews of TV, games, albums and independent cinema.

Nick Clegg, one-time deputy prime minister and Sheffield MP, writes a letter to his younger self, and there’s our crossword, Sudoku and more.