About this issue: Overview
Subway takeaway
Nuclear bomb threats, Aids and drugs epidemics, and an out-of-touch art establishment created the perfect storm for Keith Haring’s work in New York in the 1980s. Now it’s been transported to Liverpool. Gary Ryan writes.
Tunnel visions
Fiction and reality seeped into each other when Antonia Charlesworth and her friends read Elena Ferrante’s novels together. So they travelled to Naples to find their way into and out of the world of intimate and claustrophobic friendship she depicts so compellingly.
Gained in translation
When we immerse ourselves in a book, it’s easy to forget it might not have originally been written in English. Antonia Charlesworth talks to the translators of Elena Ferrante and other authors who make reading universal.
Gig economy
There’s an arts uprising going on in Liverpool, from the ground floor up. Neil Tague checks out La Violette Società, where the acts get equal billing and a fair share of the take.
Plus news, arts and entertainment, columnist Roger Ratcliffe on the evasion of politicians, jazz-funk hero George Benson’s letter to his younger self, crossword, Sudoku and more.