Johns, Emily

Johns, Emily

Emily Johns

1 October 2019Feature

Emily Johns celebrates Joan Littlewood's 'university of the streets'

Penny Dimond reading Joan Littlewood’s description of a Fun Palace from a ladder, October 2018, Torriano Meeting House. Photo: NEW FACTORY OF THE ECCENTRIC ACTOR

Imagine a place where the latent genius in all of us becomes ripe, expresses itself and communicates with others.

A place where the human mind and human creativity explore the arts and the sciences for the delight of being alive.

No certificates are awarded at this university, no prospectuses have to be printed…

1 October 2019Feature

A poster for Black history month

Remember Saro-Wiwa by Emily Johns. Linocut, 2005.

On 10 November 2019, it will be 24 years since the Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight Ogoni colleagues were hanged by the military government for campaigning nonviolently against the oil company Shell. It is over 60 years…

1 August 2019Review

Sansom & Co, 2018; 128 pp; £25

This beautifully-illustrated book documents the lives of 44 artists who were conscientious objectors (COs) and pacifists in the two world wars.

In a series of monographs, Gill Clarke gives us a valuable insight into lives lived and shaped by political and spiritual objections to killing and the war machine.

She gives us a very particular record of the development of creative lives: how artists made a living; the political and social communities of artists; and the impact of war…

17 July 2019Feature

Download, print out and display in your window!

This poster published by Peace News, 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DY. Tel. 0207 278 3344

1 June 2019Feature

The shadow collector

Image

The Shadow Collector. On 7 August 1945, the day after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Shogō Nagaoka, a geologist from Hiroshima University, began walking through the city collecting rubble. The A-bomb’s heat burned shadows of vapourised people and objects onto streets and buildings and it changed the formation of rocks. Nagaoka filled his rucksack and then his house with specimens. He believed they were vital to telling the story of…

1 December 2018Review

Myriad Editions, 2018; 80pp; £19.99

Why make reportage drawings? Graphic artist Olivier Kugler was commissioned by Médecins Sans Frontières (‘Doctors Without Borders’) to travel to Iraq, Kos and Calais to interview Syrian refugees. He took photographs and used translators to record stories. So why not stop at that?

On first viewing, I didn’t like the drawings in this book. I shrank back from lines that didn’t please me, from flat Photoshop washes. But I was curious because something interesting happens in these…

1 December 2018Feature

New artwork by Emily Johns

Lino etching: Emily Johns Displayed during Peace News’ The World is My Country exhibition in November at Hastings Arts Forum, St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex. It is one of the occasional pictures that I have made of my family history and how my personal stories intersect with the century…

1 October 2018Feature

A special PN poster to celebrate Germany's WW1 anti-war movement

Richard Muller and the Revolutionary Shop Stewards Image: Emily Johns

On 28 June 1916, Karl Liebknecht – Germany’s most famous anti-war campaigner – was put on trial for treason for his opposition to the war. That same day, some 55,000 munitions workers left their workplaces to march in perfect discipline…

1 February 2018Review

PM Press, 2015; 448pp; £21.99

A story of poverty and desperation and of crashing through a society with few safety nets, Everyone has their reasons is an education in the struggles in Europe in the 1930s. But it is most frightening because its narratives about ethnicity, migration and belonging are still so much alive today, and people at this very moment are experiencing the terror caused by borders.

This harrowing book told me things that I needed to know about Europe – and that we all need to know…

1 October 2017Review

Robin Holtom, 2016; £9; available from The Bookkeeper, 1a Kings Rd, St Leonards-on-Sea, TN37 6EA or from holtom.robin@gmail.com

John Perceval, son of the only British prime minister to have been assassinated, was committed to a lunatic asylum in 1830. Perceval’s Quest is an exploration of the circumstances and consequences of that incarceration, using as a basis Perceval’s own fascinating account of his experiences.

At the core of Perceval’s writings are modern concerns about mental health, and how a family and society interacts compassionately with an individual having very different perceptions…

3 June 2017Feature

A PN worker remembers a narrow escape with a police infiltrator

16 March 1991: Undercover police officer Andy Coles (calling himself ‘Andy Davey’) tries to cover his face as he is photographed next to PN editor Milan Rai in a pub in Fairford, Gloucestershire, after an anti-war protest at a nearby US base. PHOTO: NOOR ADMANI

In 1991, I was living in London and involved in a nonviolent direct action affinity group called ARROW (Active Resistance to the Roots of War). The group had started with direct action against the 1991 Gulf War, and then broadened…

1 June 2016Feature

Printmaker Sarah Gittens remembers the unnamed partipants who keep the peace movement going

This linocut print shows a table of people gathered to make origami cranes. They are located within a landscape derived from pictures of the area around Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped on 6 August 1945. The cranes relate to the story behind the Children’s Peace Monument in Hiroshima.

The monument shows a Japanese girl called Sadako holding up a crane. Sadako died from leukaemia as a result of radiation from the bomb. While she was in hospital, she set about making…

1 October 2015Feature

A family story of loss and arrival

Linocut: Emily Johns

This is a picture of my great-grandmother swimming across the river Drava carrying my Naganyja Ilona and my greatuncle Zoltan on her back. Behind her is my great-grandfather Shaffer. I have drawn him naked because he didn’t cross the river with his family and escape the pogrom…

1 October 2015Feature

Remembering Saro-Wiwa

Graphic: Emily Johns

On 10 November 2015, it will be 20 years since the Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight Ogoni colleagues were hanged by the military government for campaigning nonviolently against the oil company Shell.

It will be nearly 60 years since Shell started…

1 June 2015Feature

How Britain's greatest living philosopher lost his sense of humour, but got the last laugh.


'The Banning of Bertie' by Emily Johns

On 6 July 1916, Bertrand Russell – Britain's* greatest living philosopher – spoke out against the First World War at a public meeting in Cardiff, declaring that there was not ‘now any good and valid reason why this war should continue to be…