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Then there was the Sari Squad, who were quite incredible. They were a group of Asian women based in east London – each one a wicked kung fu fighter, each one willing to defend their community to the end, and some of them did actually wear saris. They started by guarding women’s gigs, but would then guard any gig where fans might need protection fro

Calcutta diarist William Hickey’s

In 525BC, Egypt was part of the Persian Empire, after being conquered by Cyrus the Great. On his death, his son, Cambyses, having failed to persuade the powerful priests of Amun to acknowledge his right to the throne of Egypt, assembled a massive army, some fifty thousand strong, and sent them off to the Oracle at Siwa to show them the error of the

Meche grabbed a cassette and began listening to Serú Girán singing Canción de Alicia en el País, about the dictatorship in Argentina. She had reached the part where the walruses have vanished

The daughter of a Russian officer, Nadezhda Durova (1783–1866) disguised herself as a man and served in the Russian cavalry during the Napoleonic Wars,

on YouTube you can watch chef Martin Yan breaking down a chicken in eighteen seconds). Chinese

On television I caught glimpses of the heroes of the Black Power movement. Muhammad Ali, Stokley Carmichael and Yuri Kochiyama were all preaching about the condition of black people, and Angela Davis was still regarded as the most dangerous person in the USA.

Women of Ireland. After Rembrandt. The three of them looking out at me like the men of the Drapers’ Guild, red on their skirts, black on their chests, dark shawls over their heads, though my mother’s hair is bare.

Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby were pioneers when it came to singing “to the microphone.” They adjusted their vocal dynamics in ways that would have been unheard of earlier. It might not seem that radical now, but crooning was a new kind of singing back then. It wouldn’t have worked without a microphone. Chet Baker even sang in a whisper, as did Joã