This magazine is full of fantastic beasts

In this week’s Big Issue…

We speak to Eddie Redmayne about Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, the movie that is looking to be talked about more than Street Cat Bob’s. And following last week’s Trump surprise, Ron Perlman another of the film’s stars, says he wants to fight for culture. “Aspire to the beautiful,” he says.

“One of the real regrets in my life,” Alan Bennett tells us, “is that I have never kept a donkey.” Ahead of publication of his diaries, this is a great, funny, spiky interview with the great man.

As the dust settles, Sam Delaney reports from Washington on how the closed political loop of the US capital got it all SOOOO wrong and still can’t quite believe what happened.

John Bird considers the reality of what Trump can achieve against what he promised to get there.

Ahead of her role starring in the new adaptation of Zadie Smith’s NW, Nikki Amuka-Bird looks at the reality of roles available for black British actors. Opportunity presenting itself for kids from immigrant parents is something veteran DJ Carl Cox covers in his great Letter My Younger Self.

And there is a fascinating Top 5 books you must read on British immigration in this week, penned by Andrew Smith. Good to see Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners feature.

Our vendor this week is Ana-Maria Dragusin who sells in Keynsham. She is looking to use the job as a springboard to training as a midwife. First, she’s focusing on Christmas.

We also have Stephen Poliakoff writing about the battle between morality and progress, we look at an incredible flat-pack solution to housing in refugee camps, and there is a really must-read piece with Albert Woodfox and Robert King, two of three men who became known as the Angola 3, victims of one of America’s worst miscarriages of justice of recent times. Woodfox spent 43 years in solitary confinement for a crime he didn’t commit. Imagine the horror of that. A rare and incredible insight from them.

As we kick off the run of bumper Christmas editions, we have the start of the We’ll Be Your Santa series of bumper prizes. Star Trek completists will like this one.