What to read this week, from Gordon Brown to a history of plagiarism

BOOK OF THE WEEK

Gordon Brown: Power With Purpose by James Macintyre

This new biography of the former prime minister may not be full of revelations, but it is full of interest – for all sorts of reasons, writes Nicola Sturgeon. It sheds light on the relationship between Peter Mandelson and Brown (and the hold Mandelson had over the whole of New Labour), it exposes the naivety at the heart of the Blair-Brown “Granita pact”, and it reveals Brown’s bitter resistance to burying the hatchet. But it also makes Sturgeon – who once viewed Brown as her nemesis – reassess the intelligence and integrity of one of the impressive politicians of our times.
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WHAT TO READ NEXT

The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth by Nicolas Niarchos

The world’s superpowers are battling for control of the raw materials essential for green technologies – the lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and copper needed for electric vehicles’ batteries, for example – while mineral-rich nations such as the Congo, where “artisanal” mining is a deadly pursuit, pay the human cost. The Observer’s climate editor Jeevan Vasagar reviews an eye-watering exposé of the dirty truth behind clean power.
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Strikingly Similar: Plagiarism and Appropriation from Chaucer to Chatbots by Roger Kreuz

Everyone from Plato to HG Wells and Susan Sontag to Bob Dylan have been accused of pilfering other people’s words and ideas. Does that make it acceptable, or should those who “recycle” and “repurpose” be held to account? Jude Rogers reviews an entertaining history of plagiarism – and asks if we can defend the value of original thought in an AI-dominated future.
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Graphic novel of the month: All the Living by Roman Muradov

Killian Fox reviews a strange and beguiling new graphic novel that shuttles between the world of the living and something resembling hell. Which is worse? This bleak but beautiful book by the Armenian artist Roman Muradov leaves us unsure. 
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ENDNOTES

Chris Power interviewed the Prix Goncourt-winning French novelist Mathias Énard (author of Zone and Compass) in the Prado Museum in Madrid. Here’s Chris:

If I’d been given my pick of authors with whom to wander around one of Europe’s great art museums, there aren’t many that would have competed with Mathias Énard. Not only because as a young man he studied art history at a school attached to the Louvre; not only because he once wrote a novel which features Michelangelo as one of the main characters (Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants), but because all his work is in conversation with the cultural and political history of both Europe and the Middle East. When I saw him, shortly before our two-hour stroll around the Prado, politely enduring a photoshoot amid several panels depicting chaos and torture painted by Hieronymus Bosch, I thought of the parallel with his work, which achieves an aesthetic beauty even as it engages with some of the most troubling and violent aspects of recent history. 
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Illustration by Charlotte Durance