CHRONICLING THE TIMES - OUT NOW!
Chronicling The Times
This personally-selected compilation of seventeen tracks from Leon’s 60-year musical career is available as a CD or double LP, and is a companion to his memoir.
LEON'S MEMOIR: GET YOUR COPY
Where are the Elephants?
An absorbing account of Leon’s journey from a childhood during the 2nd World War to lockdown during the pandemic, with lyrics from his songs to light up the way.
Isreal: What is it and does it have a right to exist?
4th May 2024
Israel is a settler colonial state founded on terrorism — 2 of Israel’s prime ministers (Begin & Shamir) were leaders of terrorist gangs — massacres, the destruction of some 400 Palestinian villages and the the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 of the indigenous inhabitants — an ethnic cleansing that continues through the 1967 war to this day as Israel aims to expel 2 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza into Egypt.
The most notorious of these massacres occurred in Deir Yassin, a peaceful village where at least 107 Palestinians, including women and children, were murdered but more gruesome was the massacre in al-Dawayima on 29th October 1948. According to a report received by the Israeli daily Al HaMishmar, soldiers from the 89th Battalion entered the village and killed 80 to 100 Arab men, women and children. “The children they killed by breaking their heads with sticks. There was not a house without dead.
Songlines Magazine Reviews Chronicling the Times
The cover photo of Chronicling the Times shows Leon Rosselson playing guitar and singing in the street, the classic image of an angry protest singer. Rosselson is certainly a musical activist who has enlivened many rallies and demonstrations, but he is also one of the finest, bravest and most original singer-songwriters that the British folk scene has produced. His work rarely gets heard on the radio, which is why he is not as well known as he should be, but he has had a hit song. In 1985 Billy Bragg included Rosselson’s ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ on his Between the Wars EP, and the story of the 17th-century radical idealists, the Diggers, made it to #15 in the charts. For Bragg, Rosselson is ‘the embodiment of the original ideals of punk rock- using fearless wit and political integrity to highlight the hypocrisies of those in power.’