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THIS IS ENGLAND
Shane Meadows’ latest film is his most autobiographical. Set in 1983, it tells the story of a vulnerable 11 year-old whose father has been killed in the Falklands conflict and who is bullied for being different. He finds a sense of belonging with a local group of skinheads who are kind to him but events get out of hand.

RAFTA RAFTA
Starring Meera Syal and Harish Patel this comedy by Ayub Khan-Din is an adaptation of a play by Bill Naughton, later filmed as ‘The Family Way’ starring Hayley Mills. Rafta Rafta transposes the story of a northern working class family in the 1960s to a contemporary Asian family. A pair of newly-weds are forced to move in with the groom’s parents as they can’t afford anywhere of their own.

ENGLEBY
Mike Engleby is the central character in Sebastian Faulks’ new novel, which is written in the form of a memoir starting with Engleby’s unhappy schooldays at public school and continuing through Cambridge university career in the 1970s and subsequent career up until the present day. Encompassing a meditation on the limits of science, the burden of consciousness and 1970s rock music, this book is also a mystery thriller.

Engleby by Sebastian Faulks is published by Hutchinson

NOTES ON NATIONALISM
This essay by George Orwell was written in 1945 and is the guest choice of Michael Collins.

Notes on Nationalism is available online or in Orwells Collected essays published by Penguin classics

THE HISTORY OF MR POLLY
This ITV drama is based on H G Well’s 1910 book and features Lee Evans as Mr Polly, a young man who wants more from life than the suburbs can offer.