About this issue: Overview
This week’s Big Issue North is the first of our bumper issues out in the lead up to Christmas. There’s more great content for the £3 the magazine costs, up from £2.50, and it will give an extra boost to vendors like Adrian from Formby. In a Q&A the father of four tells us how he’s saving every penny in the hope of flying home to Romania for Christmas to see his wife, who’s seriously ill, and children. Selling Big Issue North is his only means of supporting them and better than any job prospect he has in his native country.
Luke Evans is this week’s cover star. He’s been shooting Hollywood blockbusters back-to-back for the best part of a decade but has still found time to make an album and build a house. Simon Bland speaks to the actor and singer who credits a Welsh approach to graft and a Hollywood approach to health as the key to his success.
Which way will witch country be voting in the most decisive general election since Wold War II? In the first of a series of features looking at some of the key swing seats in the north, Roger Ratcliffe visits the Tory marginal constituency of Pendle.
Like any other carer, Finlay Myers does a lot of cooking, helps his mum put her shoes on, does the bins. But unlike most carers, Finlay’s only 12 – and he gets lonely sometimes. Saskia Murphy finds that drama classes are one way he combats it.
Also on our feature pages Benjamin Dix, creator of a graphic novel about the conflict in Sri Lanka, tells Mia Rothwell why the medium is powerful in relaying the horrors of war.
Sheffield is in the spotlight on our arts and books pages, with interviews with local portrait artist Lorna May Wadsworth and writer and performer Tim Etchells who has been part of the alternative arts scene there since the mid-80s.
As well as all that there’s our usual offer of news, opinion and reviews, a Letter to My Younger Self from 84-year-old folk singer Peggy Seeger, and of course our crossword and Sudoku.