BOOK REVIEW: BFI Film Classics: A Hard Day's Night by Samira Ahmed

This article was originally published in The Big Issue in May 2026.

BFI Film Classics: A Hard Day's Night, Samira Ahmed, out now, Bloomsbury Publishing, £11.69

Released at the height of Beatlemania in 1964, the Beatles' first film A Hard Day's Night could've easily been a formulaic pop vehicle churned out with little thought or effort.

That it ended up being a unique fusion of the French Nouvelle Vague, British social realism, surrealism, pop art, sitcom, satire, silent cinema slapstick, the Marx Brothers and quasi-cinema verite is testament not only to the band's integrity – they insisted that the film have some artistic merit – but also to the combined talents of screenwriter Alun Owen, director Richard Lester and his artisan crew.

In BFI Film Classics: A Hard Day's Night, the esteemed writer and broadcaster Samira Ahmed delivers a fascinatingly detailed study of the film's production, some perceptive scene-by-scene analysis, and a wider exploration of its sociohistorical context.

A Beatles fan since childhood, Ahmed captures – to quote her choice description – “the eternal Saturday afternoon energy” of this hugely influential and innovative cinematic landmark. A film very much of its time yet somehow timeless – Ahmed notes that only one fleeting piece of dialogue has aged badly – AHDN perfectly encapsulates the wit, charm and explosive musical synergy of the Beatles in their irreverent hive-mind, mop-top pomp.

It's also a cheerfully anti-establishment rock 'n' roll comedy in which a bunch of 'long-haired louts' scamper through a beautifully photographed monochrome world governed by entitled reactionaries and baffled authority figures, and a metatextual – yet never bitter – commentary on the grinding pressures of fame and mass media commodification.

As Ahmed observes, with typical acuity, AHDN is “a film in which the Beatles are frequently reproduced through camera viewfinders, studio monitors, TV set backdrops of beetles and leaping life-size blow-ups.”

The book is, by Ahmed's own admission, not a dry piece of academic film theory. It's an elegantly written, palpably affectionate essay brimming with sharp insight and commendably thorough research. Like all the best retrospective pop culture writing, it will encourage readers to revisit a familiar text with fresh, eager eyes.

BOOK REVIEW: After the Flood: Inside Bob Dylan's Memory Palace by Robert Polito

This article was originally published in The Big Issue in March 2026.

After the Flood: Inside Bob Dylan's Memory Palace by Robert Polito, out now, WW Norton & Co, £25

Received wisdom dictates that Bob Dylan’s imperial phase was in the ’60s and ’70s, with everything after that little more than an extended footnote of only occasional interest. That, argues the celebrated author, poet and academic Robert Polito in After the Flood: Inside Bob Dylan’s Memory Palace, is arrant nonsense. Dylan’s genius didn’t fade, it continued to evolve and mutate in all sorts of fascinating ways. 

His persuasive thesis unfolds from around 1991 to 2024, 30-plus years of peripatetic creativity during which Dylan released 13 albums, played over 3,000 dates on his never-ending tour, published two books, co-wrote and starred in a film, hosted a weekly radio show between 2006 and 2009, exhibited his paintings and sculptures in galleries all over the world, and received – with typical wariness – the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Polito provides in-depth analysis of all the key works from this period in a kinetic prose style befitting his subject. His fluid torrent of questions, allusions, digressions and theories never loses focus, there is method to his idiosyncratic approach to this material.

It flits back and forwards in time, thus emphasising his overall point that, for Dylan, history isn’t a thing of the past, but rather something that is constantly in flux, a vast tapestry of characters, incidents and places, an infinitely repeating hall of mirrors, a swirling collage of facts, memories, fantasies and dreams he can draw upon to create timeless works of art.  

The Dylan we find here is a voracious collector of weird Americana, a man steeped in decades of popular culture – both so-called high and low – who continues to delight in confounding expectations.

While it’s impossible to imagine Dylan ever reading a book about himself, I suspect he’d get a kick out of this one. It’s thoughtful, enlightening, slightly offbeat and never dull.

BOOK REVIEW: A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever: The Story of Spinal Tap, by Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean & Harry Shearer

This article was originally published in The Big Issue in November 2025.

A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever: The Story of Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, out now, Simon & Schuster, £17.49

One of the greatest comedy films of all time, This Is Spinal Tap didn't make much of an impact upon its release in 1984.

An improvised mockumentary about a fictional English rock band played by American comic actors who weren't particularly well-known was, apparently, a tough sell. However, it gradually became a cult hit on VHS and is now part of the cultural fabric.

In A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever: The Story of Spinal Tap, the film's director Rob Reiner recounts its making alongside co-creators Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer. A fascinatingly fact-packed gift for Tapheads, it's as much of a labour of love as the film itself.

What began as a sketch for a 1979 TV comedy special hosted by Reiner quickly took on a life of its own when Guest, McKean and Shearer realised they loved improvising - or 'schnadling' as Guest calls it - in character as these none-too-bright yet endearingly sincere and pretentious rockers.

Reiner, a successful sitcom actor who wanted to direct, was similarly smitten, and lo the film was born. Well, almost. Armed with a 20-minute demo reel and a four-page document detailing the band's eventful history, it took four demoralising years of fruitless meetings with baffled executives before they eventually met a producer, Karen Murphy, who understood what they were trying to do. A masterpiece ensued.

Amidst all the generously detailed trivia on the film's production - e.g. they wanted Michael Palin to play Tap's manager, but were too nervous to approach one of their comedy heroes - the book also foregrounds the talents, both musically and comedically, of its three main players.

Guest and McKean in particular are music obsessives who've been friends since the late '60s; their enduring closeness is mirrored by that of their Tap alter egos Nigel and David, albeit without the petty squabbling. Like all the best musical parodists they have a keen understanding of, and affection for, their target (certain jokes in the film are based on first-hand experience).

The authors also reflect upon the strange afterlife of Tap - much like the Monkees and the Rutles they became A Real Band who played shows and released albums - the decades-long legal battle to actually earn money from the film, and the making of its belated and not-bad-at-all sequel.

We're also treated to an enjoyable epilogue in which they 'schnadle' in character, possibly for one last time.

A delightful book.

BOOK REVIEW: Bless Me Father: A Life Story by Kevin Rowland

This article was originally published in The Big Issue in September 2025.

Bless Me Father: A Life Story, Kevin Rowland, out now, Ebury Spotlight, £19.65

As far back as he can remember, Dexys Midnight Runners lynchpin Kevin Rowland has struggled with anxiety and a deep-seated inferiority complex. Even while topping the early '80s charts with irrefutable pop classics Geno and Come on Eileen, Rowland was beset by doubt, guilt, paranoia and self-destructive impulses.

But he also pursued his singular creative vision with a burning and utterly dedicated intensity. He believed, quite rightly, that Dexys were something special. He just didn't particularly like himself.

In Bless Me Father: A Life Story, Rowland bares his sensitive soul with commendable - if sometimes alarming - honesty. An addict who's been in recovery for over thirty years, his autobiography is full of touchingly sincere apologies to everyone he mistreated as an angry, difficult, insular young man. It's also full of praise and gratitude, and he never wallows in self-pity or mealy-mouthed excuses.

Rowland's devout Irish Catholic father, who never blessed his wayward son with a single word of praise, would usually be cast as the villain in a lesser, more self-serving memoir. Rowland does, of course, understand that he was always seeking his father's approval - "I was desperate to prove I wasn't useless" - but he clearly loved the man, faults and all. Their relationship is at the heart of this story.

The chapters devoted to Rowland's post-Dexys years of cocaine addiction are relentlessly grim. On the dole and living in a threadbare flat, he'd been royally screwed by a former manager and had to declare bankruptcy. But he survived, got clean, and now lives comfortably on his songwriting royalties. He's in a better place.

Rowland is a true artist, an idiosyncratic aesthete who flourished during an era when working-class 'weirdos' were allowed to gatecrash the mainstream. We will not see his like again.