book reviews and features
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Wednesday, 01 October 2025
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com. It followed some hectic and intensive months when a disparate and... Read more... |
Zsuzsanna Gahse: Mountainish review - seeking refuge
Tuesday, 29 April 2025
Mountainish by Zsuzsanna Gahse is a collection of 515 notes, each contributing to an expansive kaleidoscope of mountain encounters. Translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire in... Read more... |
Patrick McGilligan: Woody Allen - A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham review - New York stories
Wednesday, 09 April 2025
Patrick McGilligan’s biography of Woody Allen weighs in at an eye-popping 800 pages, yet he waits only for... Read more... |
Howard Amos: Russia Starts Here review - East meets West, via the Pskov region
Tuesday, 01 April 2025
Russia Starts Here: Real Lives in the Ruin of Empire, the journalist Howard Amos’ first book, is a prescient and fascinating examination of the borderlands of a bellicose nation. Focusing... Read more... |
Henry Gee: The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Why Our Species is on the Edge of Extinction review - survival instincts
Saturday, 15 March 2025
Henry Gee’s previous book, A Brief History of Life on Earth, made an interestingly downbeat read for a title that won the UK’s science book prize. He emphasised that a... Read more... |
Jonathan Buckley: One Boat review - a shore thing
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
One Boat, Jonathan Buckley’s 13th novel, captures a series of encounters at the water’s edge: characters converge... Read more... |
Jessica Duchen: Myra Hess - National Treasure review - well-told life of a pioneering musician
Tuesday, 25 February 2025
Myra Hess was one of the most important figures in British cultural life in the mid-20th century: the pre-eminent... Read more... |
Shon Faye: Love in Exile review - the greatest feeling
Tuesday, 18 February 2025
As Valentine’s Day crests around us, and lonely hearts come out of their winter hibernation, what better time to publish writer and journalist Shon Faye’s second book Love in Exile? In... Read more... |
Philip Marsden: Under a Metal Sky review - rock and awe
Tuesday, 11 February 2025
Working on materials was basic to human culture from the start: chipping at flint to make a hand-axe; fashioning bone or wood; drying hides. In time, people discovered that some materials,... Read more... |
Jacqueline Feldman: Precarious Lease review - living on the edge
Saturday, 08 February 2025
Taking on some of the contingent, nebulous quality of its subject, Jacqueline Feldman’s Precarious Lease examines the beginning... Read more... |
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latest in today
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Pimpinone, Royal Opera in the Linbury Theatre review - farce...
Full marks to the Royal Opera for good planning: one first night knocking us all sideways with the darkest German operatic tragedy followed by...
Krapp's Last Tape, Barbican review - playing with the l...
In the Stygian darkness of a bare room, a table on a low platform with a light hanging overhead starts to emerge. Then a door briefly...
Formula E: Driver, Prime Video review - inside the world...
The success of Netflix’s Drive to Survive not only provoked a viewer-stampede towards the world’s most expensive sport, but also...
Do Ho Suh: Walk the House, Tate Modern review - memories are...
A traditional Korean house has appeared at Tate Modern....
Die Walküre, Royal Opera review - total music drama
Wagner’s universe, in the second of his Ring operas which brings semi-humans on board to challenge the gods, matches exaltation and misery, terror...
Georgia Mancio, Alan Broadbent, Pizza Express Dean Street re...
Does it spark joy? Yes, definitely...and maybe we music critics should ask the Marie Kondo question more often. London-based vocalist/lyricist...
The Extraordinary Miss Flower review - odd mashup of music,...
The makers of The Extraordinary Miss Flower are billing it as a “performance film”, a subspecies of the concert-movie...
Borrowed Time: Lennon's Last Decade review - how the gr...
Purporting to be a documentary about John Lennon in the 1970s, Borrowed Time is no such thing....