sat 10/05/2025

book reviews and features

Extract: TV by Susan Bordo

theartsdesk

"Television and I grew up together." As a baby boomer born in 1947, Susan Bordo is roughly the same age as our beloved gogglebox, which began life as a broad box with a ten-inch screen, chunky and...

Read more...

theartsdesk Q&A: Author Sam Mills on the phenomenon of the 'chauvo-feminist'

CP Hunter

Sam Mills’s writing includes the wondrously weird novel The Quiddity of Will Self, the semi-memoir Fragments of My Father, and Chauvo-Feminism (The Indigo Press), which...

Read more...

Charles Saumarez Smith: The Art Museum In Modern Times review – the story of modern architecture

Daniel Baksi

“This book is a journey of historical discovery, set out sequentially in order to convey a sense of what has changed over time.” Add to this sentence, the title of the work from which it is taken...

Read more...

Craig Taylor: New Yorkers - A City and Its People in Our Time review

Liz Thomson

For the last couple of years, until we were so rudely interrupted, I’d been spending chunks of the year in New York, a city I’ve come to know...

Read more...

Prix Pictet: Confinement review - a year in photographs

Florence Hallett

Sustainability and the environment are watchwords for the Prix Pictet, the international...

Read more...

Alan Warner: Kitchenly 434 review – dreams and delusions in the backwaters of fame

Boyd Tonkin

“They think it’s all drugs and sex up here, Mrs H.” “Bless me.” The reality, at Kitchenly Mill Race, runs more to a nice pot of Tetley’s and a plate of Gypsy Creams. But “people are funny around...

Read more...

Edward St Aubyn: Double Blind review - constructing 'cognition literature'

Charlie Stone

If it weren’t for the warning on the blurb, the first chapter of Double Blind would have you wondering whether you’d ordered something from the...

Read more...

Agustín Fernández Mallo: The Things We've Seen review - degrees of separation

Daniel Baksi

Trilogies (it is noted, in the term’s Wikipedia entry) “are common in speculative fiction”. They are found in...

Read more...

Extract from Sauntering: Writers Walk Europe, introduced and edited by Duncan Minshull

theartsdesk

Wandering, ambling, sauntering. The last, least heard of the three, captures a sense of leisurely aimlessness: a jolly meander unbound by destination, admitting none of the qualms of...

Read more...

Nina-Sophia Miralles: Glossy - debut author takes on Vogue and the Condé Nasties

Markie Robson-Scott

“Bringing out a luxury magazine in a blitzkrieg is rather like dressing for dinner in the jungle,” wrote Audrey Withers, editor of British Vogue, in December...

Read more...

Pages

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

The future of Arts Journalism

 

You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!

We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £33,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d

And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.

 

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...

Supergrass, Barrowland, Glasgow review - nostalgia played wi...

It is a family affair at Supergrass shows these days. There were plenty of parents and offspring filing onto the Barrowland’s famous old...

Louis Cole, Roundhouse review - nothing is everything

London's iconic Roundhouse, packed to the rafters, provided the perfect setting for the UK premiere of Louis Cole's groundbreaking album ...

Album: Peter Doherty - Felt Better Alive

Following on from an impressive set with the Libertines – last year’s No 1 album All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade – Peter Doherty...

Here We Are, National Theatre review - Sondheim's sensa...

You don't have to be greeting the modern day with a smile unsupported by events in the wider world to have a field day at Here We Are....

Riefenstahl review - fascinating fascism? Portrait of the Na...

There used to be an unwritten rule among BBC commissioners about how long an interval had to pass before greenlighting a new documentary on a...

Giant, Harold Pinter Theatre review - incendiary Roald Dahl...

When Mark Rosenblatt was preparing his debut play, the miseries of the assault on Gaza were still over the horizon. Now they are here,...

'Classic-era prog’s Olympian pinnacle': Pink Floyd...

Pink Floyd’s “Echoes”, the ineffable progressive rock epic that occupies side two of...

The Surfer review - Nicolas Cage is relentlessly down and ou...

“Don’t live here, don’t surf here,” is the menacing motto (sounds more scary with an Australian accent) of the tanned, muscular denizens of Luna...

Einkvan, Det Norske Teatret, The Coronet Theatre review - al...

Watching the stricken faces on the split screen, I felt at times like callow Farfrae in Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge: when faced...

newsletter

Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday!

Simply enter your email address in the box below

View previous newsletters