Author: Connor Richardson

I am a member of the Population Health Sciences Institute (NUPHSI) and work across the Ageing and Geoscience and Innovation, Methodology and Application themes. My research also covers several Newcastle University Centres of Research Excellence (NUCoRE):

Centre for Ageing and Inequality
Centre for data
Centre for Healthier Lives

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Book Club Holocaust Memorial Day

Book Club: Holocaust Memorial Day

January 27th

Recommended by the Lit & Phil

Annexed

Sharon Dogar | Young Fiction

Everyone knows about Anne Frank, and her life hidden in the secret annexe – or do they?


Peter van Pels and his family are locked away in there with the Franks, and Peter sees it all differently. He’s a boy, and for a boy it’s just not the same. What is it like to be forced into hiding with Anne Frank, to hate her and then find yourself falling in love with her? To know you’re being written about in her diary, day after day? What’s it like to sit and wait and watch whilst others die, and you wish you were fighting?

A delicate, poised and scrupulous re-enactment.

Mal Peet, The Guardian


How can Anne and Peter try to make sense of one of the most devastating episodes in recent history – the holocaust?


Anne’s diary ends on August 4 1944, but Peter’s story takes us on, beyond their betrayal and into the Nazi death camps. He details with accuracy, clarity and compassion, the reality of day to day survival in Auschwitz – and the terrible conclusion.


It’s a story rooted firmly in history and it asks a question of us all: Are we listening?


‘Is anybody there?’ Peter cries from the depths of his despair in the camps. Read it, and you will be.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz

Heather Morris | Fiction

I tattooed a number on her arm. She tattooed her name on my heart.

In 1942, Lale Sokolov arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was given the job of tattooing the prisoners marked for survival – scratching numbers into his fellow victims’ arms in indelible ink to create what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust. 

A sincere…moving attempt to speak the unspeakable

The Sunday Times

Waiting in line to be tattooed, terrified and shaking, was a young girl. For Lale – a dandy, a jack-the-lad, a bit of a chancer – it was love at first sight. And he was determined not only to survive himself, but to ensure this woman, Gita, did, too.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz is a very moving book, showing the survival of humanity in a brutal place. I love this story

The Reading Life

So begins one of the most life-affirming, courageous, unforgettable and human stories of the Holocaust: the love story of the tattooist of Auschwitz.

Maus

Art Spiegelman | Graphic Novel

Hailed as the greatest graphic novel of all time.

Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father’s story.

The first masterpiece in comic book history.

The New Yorker

Approaching the unspeakable through the diminutive (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), Vladek’s harrowing story of survival is woven into the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father.


Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits, studying the bloody pawprints of history and tracking its meaning for those who come next.

The Holocaust: A New History

Lawrence Reese | Non-fiction

This landmark work answers two of the most fundamental questions in history – how, and why, did the Holocaust happen?

Laurence Rees has spent twenty-five years meeting survivors and perpetrators of the Holocaust. Now, in his magnum opus, he combines their enthralling eyewitness testimony, a large amount of which has never been published before, with the latest academic research to create the first accessible and authoritative account of the Holocaust in more than three decades. 

By far the clearest book ever written about the Holocaust, and also the best at explaining its origins and grotesque mentality, as well as its chaotic development.

Antony Beevor

This is a new history of the Holocaust in three ways. First, and most importantly, Rees has created a gripping narrative that that contains a large amount of testimony that has never been published before. Second, he places this powerful interview material in the context of an examination of the decision making process of the Nazi state, and in the process reveals the series of escalations that cumulatively created the horror. Third, Rees covers all those across Europe who participated in the deaths, and he argues that whilst hatred of the Jews was always at the epicentre of Nazi thinking, what happened cannot be fully understood without considering the murder of the Jews alongside plans to kill millions of non-Jews, including homosexuals, ‘Gypsies’ and the disabled.

Through a chronological, intensely readable narrative, featuring enthralling eyewitness testimony and the latest academic research, this is a compelling new account of the worst crime in history.

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Book Club

Book Club: World Religion Day

January 16th

Recommended by the Lit & Phil

Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms

Gerard Russell | Non-fiction

Despite its reputation for religious intolerance, the Middle East has long sheltered many distinctive and strange faiths: one regards the Greek prophets as incarnations of God, another reveres Lucifer in the form of a peacock, and yet another believes that their followers are reincarnated beings who have existed in various forms for thousands of years. These religions represent the last vestiges of the magnificent civilizations in ancient history: Persia, Babylon, Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs. Their followers have learned how to survive foreign attacks and the perils of assimilation. But today, with the Middle East in turmoil, they face greater challenges than ever before. 

‘A highly topical study of Middle Eastern anomalies which is teaching me a lot, and should be read by all Western policy makers those who do read’ 

Jan Morris, New York Times 

In Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms, former diplomat Gerard Russell ventures to the distant, nearly impassable regions where these mysterious religions still cling to survival. He lives alongside the Mandaeans and Ezidis of Iraq, the Zoroastrians of Iran, the Copts of Egypt, and others. He learns their histories, participates in their rituals, and comes to understand the threats to their communities. Historically a tolerant faith, Islam has, since the early 20th century, witnessed the rise of militant, extremist sects. This development, along with the rippling effects of Western invasion, now pose existential threats to these minority faiths. And as more and more of their youth flee to the West in search of greater freedoms and job prospects, these religions face the dire possibility of extinction. 

Drawing on his extensive travels and archival research, Russell provides an essential record of the past, present, and perilous future of these remarkable religions.

Jerusalem The Biography

Simon Sebag Montefiore | Non-fiction

erusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today’s clash of civilizations. From King David to Barack Obama, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict, this is the epic history of 3,000 years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and coexistence. 

How did this small, remote town become the Holy City, the ‘centre of the world’ and now the key to peace in the Middle East? In a gripping narrative, Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals this ever-changing city in its many incarnations, bringing every epoch and character blazingly to life. Jerusalem’s biography is told through the wars, love affairs and revelations of the men and women – kings, empresses, prophets, poets, saints, conquerors and whores – who created, destroyed, chronicled and believed in Jerusalem.

A fittingly vast and dazzling portrait of Jerusalem, utterly compelling from start to finish

Christopher Hart, The Sunday Times

Drawing on new archives, current scholarship, his own family papers and a lifetime’s study, Montefiore illuminates the essence of sanctity and mysticism, identity and empire in a unique chronicle of the city that many believe will be the setting for the Apocalypse. This is how Jerusalem became Jerusalem, and the only city that exists twice – in heaven and on earth.

A Little History of Religion

Richard Holloway | Non-fiction

“For readers in search of a thoughtful, thorough, and approachable survey of the history of religion, this book is an excellent place to start.”―Booklist
 
Written for those with faith and for those without―and especially for younger readers―A Little History of Religion sweeps us through the story of religion in our world, from the dawn of religious belief to the present.

“A Little History of Religion both delights readers and tackles a subject historically and emotionally wide-ranging. . . . Holloway repeatedly links religious movements to political action, perhaps cautionary tales for our times, and how to seek accurate religious history-a surprisingly superior handbook.”

Katharine C. Black, Anglican and Episcopal History


 
An emphathetic yet discerning guide to the enduring importance of faith, Richard Holloway introduces us to the history and beliefs of the major world religions―Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism. He also explores where religious belief comes from; the search for meaning through the ages; how differences in belief sometimes lead to hostility and violence; what is a sect and what is a cult; and much more. Throughout, Holloway encourages curiosity and tolerance, accentuates nuance and mystery, and calmly restores a sense of the value of faith.

The Mahabharata

Krishna-Dwaipayan Vyasa | Epic

The Mahabharata is an ancient Indian epic where the main story revolves around two branches of a family – the Pandavas and Kauravas – who, in the Kurukshetra War, battle for the throne of Hastinapura. Interwoven into this narrative are several smaller stories about people dead or living, and philosophical discourses.

Krishna-Dwaipayan Vyasa, himself a character in the epic, composed it; as, according to tradition, he dictated the verses and Ganesha wrote them down. At 100,000 verses, it is the longest epic poem ever written, generally thought to have been composed in the 4th century BCE or earlier. The events in the epic play out in the Indian subcontinent and surrounding areas. It was first narrated by a student of Vyasa at a snake-sacrifice of the great-grandson of one of the major characters of the story. Including within it the Bhagavad Gita, the Mahabharata is one of the most important texts of ancient Indian, indeed world, literature.

Categories
Book Club Trangender Awareness Week

Book Club: Transgender Awareness Week

13th – 19th December

Recommended by the Lit & Phil

The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice

Shon Faye | Non-fiction

Trans people in Britain today have become a culture war ‘issue’. Despite making up less than one per cent of the country’s population, subjects of a toxic and polarised ‘debate’ which generates controversy for newspapers and talk shows. This media frenzy conceals a simple fact: we are having the wrong conversation, in which trans people themselves are reduced to a talking point and denied a meaningful voice.

Shon Faye reclaims the idea of the ‘transgender issue’ to uncover the reality of what it means to be trans in a transphobic society. In doing so, she provides a compelling, wide-ranging analysis of trans lives from youth to old age, exploring work, family, housing, healthcare, the prison system and trans participation in the LGBTQ+ and feminist communities, in contemporary Britain and beyond.

It is a manifesto for change, and a call for justice and solidarity between all marginalised people and minorities. Trans liberation, as Faye sees it, goes to the root of what our society is and what it could be; it offers the possibility of a more just, free and joyful world for all of us.

Few books are as urgent as Shon Faye’s debut … Faye has hope for the future – and maybe so should we.

Independent

Julian Is a Mermaid

Jessica Love | Children’s fiction

Beautifully illustrated and joyously inclusive, Julian is a M ermaid has a good claim to being the most progressive picture book of the decade. But even aside from the positive messages of tolerance and identity, Love’s future classic is a riot of colour, wit and glorious humanity.

Mesmerising and full of heart, this is a picture book about self-confidence and love, and a radiant celebration of individuality.

While riding the subway home with his Nana one day, Julian notices three women spectacularly dressed up. Their hair billows in brilliant hues, their dresses end in fishtails, and their joy fills the train carriage. When Julian gets home, daydreaming of the magic he’s seen, all he can think about is dressing up just like the ladies and making his own fabulous mermaid costume. But what will Nana think about the mess he makes – and even more importantly – what will she think about how Julian sees himself?

Every choice Jessica Love makes imbues the story with charm, tenderness and humour

New York Times Book Review

Conundrum

Jan Morris | Memoir

As one of Britain’s best and most loved travel writers, Jan Morris has led an extraordinary life. Perhaps her most remarkable work is this grippingly honest account of her ten-year transition from man to woman – its pains and joys, its frustrations and discoveries.

On first publication in 1974, the book generated enormous interest and curiosity around the world, and was subsequently chosen by The Times as one of the ‘100 Key Books of Our Time’. Including a new introduction, this re-issue marks a return to that particular journey.

Certainly the best first-hand account ever written by a traveller across the boundaries of sex.

Daily Mail

Wonderland

Juno Dawson | Fiction

Addressing issues of mental health, gender and privilege, Dawson’s novel is an irrepressibly stylish take on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.   

Waterstones

Alice lives in a world of stifling privilege and luxury – but none of it means anything when your own head plays tricks on your reality. When her troubled friend Bunny goes missing, Alice becomes obsessed with finding her. On the trail of her last movements, Alice discovers a mysterious invitation to ‘Wonderland’: the party to end all parties – three days of hedonistic excess to which only the elite are welcome.

Will she find Bunny there? Or is this really a case of finding herself? Because Alice has secrets of her own, and ruthless socialite queen Paisley Hart is determined to uncover them, whatever it takes.

Alice is all alone, miles from home and without her essential medication. She can trust no-one, least of all herself, and now she has a new enemy who wants her head…

African AIDS Awareness Month Alzheimer's Black History Month Book Club Caribbean Conversion Therapy COVID-19 Dementia Diabetes Disability History Month Elder Abuse End of Life Care holocaust Inclusion International Men's Day LGBT+ Medicine Mental Health Paternal PEACE Project Perinatal Refugee Transgender Violence against LGBT people world alzheimer's day world religion day

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AIDS Awareness Month Book Club

Book Club: AIDS Awareness Month

December

Recommended by the Lit & Phil https://www.litandphil.org.uk

Tales of the City

Armistead Maupin | Fiction

For more than three decades Armistead Maupin’s T ales of the City has blazed its own trail through popular culture from a groundbreaking newspaper serial to a classic novel, to a television event that entranced millions around the world.

The first of six novels about the denizens of the mythic apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane, Tales is both a sparkling comedy of manners and an indelible portrait of an era that changed forever the way we live.

Maupin’s other novels include Maybe the Moon and The Night Listener. Maupin was the 2012 recipient of the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Pioneer Award. He lives in San Francisco with his husband, the photographer Christopher Turner.

Inspiring, uplifting and necessary reading.

Steve Silberman author of Neurotribes, Financial Times

How to Survive a Plague

David France | Non-fiction

How to Survive a Plague by David France is the riveting, powerful and profoundly moving story of the AIDS epidemic and the grass-roots movement of activists, many of them facing their own life-or-death struggles, who grabbed the reins of scientific research to help develop the drugs that turned HIV from a mostly fatal infection to a manageable disease.

Around the globe, the 15.8 million people taking anti-AIDS drugs today are alive thanks to their efforts. Not since the publication of Randy Shilts’s now classic And the Band Played On in 1987 has a book sought to measure the AIDS plague in such brutally human, intimate, and soaring terms.

Weaving together the stories of dozens of individuals, this is an insider’s account of a pivotal moment in our history and one that changed the way that medical science is practised worldwide.

This superbly written chronicle will stand as a towering work in its field.

Sunday Times

The Line of Beauty

Alan Hollinghurst | Alt-fiction

It is the summer of 1983, and young Nick Guest, an innocent in the matters of politics and money, has moved into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the Feddens: Gerald, an ambitious new Tory MP, his wealthy wife Rachel, and their children Toby and Catherine. Nick had idolised Toby at Oxford, but in his London life it will be the troubled Catherine who becomes his friend and his uneasy responsibility.

Innocent of politics and money, Nick is swept up into the Feddens’ world and an era of endless possibility, all the while pursuing his own private obsession with beauty.

The Line of Beauty is novel that defines a decade, exploring with peerless style a young man’s collision with his own desires, and with a world he can never truly belong to.

The best-deserving Booker winner ever.

The Sunday Times

Living and Loving in the age of AIDS

Derek Frost | Memoir

This is the tale of a devastating pandemic, of lives cut painfully short – it’s also a love story.

Derek, a distinguished designer, and J, a pioneering entrepreneur and creator of Heaven, the iconic gay dance club, met and fell in love more than 40 years ago.

In the early 1980s their friends began to get sick and die – AIDS had arrived in their lives. When they got tested, J received what was then a death sentence: he was HIV Positive. While the onset of AIDS strengthened stigma and fear globally, they confronted their crisis with courage, humour and an indomitable resolve to survive. J’s battle lasted six long years.

Turning to spiritual reflection, yoga, nature – and always to love – Derek describes a transformation of the spirit, how compassion and empathy rose phoenix-like from the flames of sickness and death, and how he and J founded the charity Aids Ark, which has helped to save more than 1,000 HIV Positive lives.

This is a story of joy and triumph, of facing universal challenges, of the great rewards that come from giving back. Derek speaks for a generation who lived through a global health crisis that many at the time refused even to acknowledge. His is a powerful story chronicling this extraordinary era.

A classic of our times… The work of a great English stylist in full maturity; a masterpiece.

The Observer

African AIDS Awareness Month Alzheimer's Black History Month Book Club Caribbean Conversion Therapy COVID-19 Dementia Diabetes Disability History Month Elder Abuse End of Life Care holocaust Inclusion International Men's Day LGBT+ Medicine Mental Health Paternal PEACE Project Perinatal Refugee Transgender Violence against LGBT people world alzheimer's day world religion day

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Categories
Book Club Disability History Month

Book Club: Disability History Month

18th November – 20th December

Recommendations from the Lit & Phil https://www.litandphil.org.uk

So Lucky

Nicola Griffith | Fiction

Mara Tagarelli is on top of her world. She’s the head of a multimillion-dollar AIDS foundation, an accomplished martial artist, and happily married. She has never met a problem she can’t solve — until suddenly she can’t solve any of them. In a single week her wife leaves her, she is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and she loses her job.

Now everything begins to feel like a threat. At first, she thinks it’s just her newfound sense of vulnerability. Then she realises the threat of violence is real, deadly, and heading straight for her.

Nicola Griffith’s So Lucky is fiction from the front lines, incandescent and urgent, a narrative juggernaut that rips through sentiment to expose the savagery of the experience of becoming disabled and dismissed.

Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People
Who Think Differently

Steve Silberman | Non-fiction

What is autism: a devastating developmental condition, a lifelong disability, or a naturally occurring form of cognitive difference akin to certain forms of genius? In truth, it is all of these things and more – and the future of our society depends on our understanding it.

Following on from his groundbreaking article ‘The Geek Syndrome’, Wired reporter Steve Silberman unearths the secret history of autism, long suppressed by the same clinicians who became famous for discovering it, and finds surprising answers to the crucial question of why the number of diagnoses has soared in recent years.

Going back to the earliest autism research and chronicling the brave and lonely journey of autistic people and their families through the decades, Silberman provides long- sought solutions to the autism puzzle while casting light on the growing movement of ‘neurodiversity’ and mapping out a path towards a more humane world for people with learning differences.

Wonder

R.J. Palacio | Children 9-11 years

‘My name is August . I won’t describe what I look like. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably worse.’

Auggie wants to be an ordinary ten-year-old. He does ordinary things – eating ice cream, playing on his Xbox. He feels ordinary -inside. But ordinary kids don’t make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds. Ordinary kids aren’t stared at wherever they go.

Born with a terrible facial abnormality, Auggie has been home-schooled by his parents his whole life. Now, for the first time, he’s being sent to a real school – and he’s dreading it. All he wants is to be accepted – but can he convince his new classmates that he’s just like them, underneath it all?

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century

Alice Wong | Non-fiction

According to the last Census, one in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some are visible, some are hidden but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Now, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, activist Alice Wong brings together an urgent, galvanising collection of personal essays by disabled people in the 21st century.

From Harriet McBryde Johnson’s account of her famous debate with Princeton philosopher Peter Singer over her own personhood, to original pieces by up-and-coming authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma; from blog posts, manifestos, eulogies, testimonies to Congress, and beyond: this anthology gives a glimpse of the vast richness and complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own assumptions and understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and past with hope and love.

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