Catching Courage

Ronnie Kasrils's memoir reflects on compelling questions as to what turned a white youngster from a modest background into a lifelong revolutionary of note. A tiny minority who abandoned a life of privilege were the antithesis of conventionality and toeing the line. What made those such as Kasrils break all the rules and confront white power with such courage, unbridled spirit and yearning for the truth?This is a challenging and fascinating conundrum but Kasrils will claim he is no aberration of history. The answers to that question, which unravel through twenty years, will beguile readers as he peers back with endearing frankness into the origins and experiences of his formative years.

Writer Adam Nicolson is granted rare access to the ruins of the whaling stations on the remote British island of South Georgia. Amazing rarely seen archive footage and first-hand testimony from the last of Britain's whale hunters reveals what it was really like to have been a whale hunter in Antarctica, providing Europe with essential oils for soap and food. Putting our modern environmental guilt to one side, this provocative series looks at how and why whale populations were so drastically reduced in the 20th century and attempts to see whaling through the eyes of the time.

Quartet Records, in collaboration with Universal Music France and the Ecoutez le cinéma! Collection, are glad to present the expanded, definitive release of Jerry Goldsmith’s masterpiece for Franklin J. Schafner’s 1973 prison drama Papillon. The bestselling autobiography of Henri Charrière, one of the few people to successfully escape from the notorious French penal colony of Devil's Island, served as the basis for Papillon. Steve McQueen plays the pugnacious Charrière (known as "Papillon" because of a prominent tattoo), incarcerated—wrongly, he claims—for murdering a pimp. He saves the life of fellow convict Louis Dega (Dustin Hoffman), a counterfeiter who will later show his gratitude by helping Charrière in his many escape attempts, and by smuggling food to Charrière when the latter is put in solitary confinement.