thu 10/07/2025

book reviews and features

Agnès Poirier: Left Bank review - Paris in war and peace

Marina Vaizey

There are too many awestruck cultural histories of...

Read more...

Matthew Sweet: Operation Chaos review - paranoia and insanity in the Cold War

Jasper Rees

In 2017 the documentary series The Vietnam War told the story, from soup to nuts, of America’s misadventure in south-east Asia. It now seems the comprehensive...

Read more...

'In order to write my book I had to kill Jane Austen'

Rachel Halliburton

My heroine would not have appeared in a Jane Austen novel. Brilliant, arch and incisive though Austen...

Read more...

Stephen Walsh's Debussy - A Painter in Sound - extract

stephen Walsh

All this time La Mer had been brewing. It was almost a year since Debussy had written to Colonne...

Read more...

Lisa Halliday: Asymmetry review - unconventional and brilliant

Katherine Waters

Lisa Halliday’s striking debut novel consists of three parts. The first follows the blooming relationship between Alice and Ezra (...

Read more...

Rhidian Brook on The Killing of Butterfly Joe

Rhidian Brook

When I was 23 I had a job selling butterflies in glass cases in America. I worked for a guy who, as well as...

Read more...

Ursula K Le Guin - Dreams Must Explain Themselves review - enraging and enlightening

Marina Vaizey

Essay collections are happily mainstream now, from Zadie Smith to Oliver Sacks, with more and more bits and bobs coming from unexpected quarters. These patchwork quilts from remarkable writers can...

Read more...

John Tusa: 'the arts must make a noise' - interview

Liz Thomson

In our era of 24/7 news, downloadable from anywhere in the world at the touch of an app, it's hard to...

Read more...

Mick Herron: London Rules review - hypnotically fascinating, absolutely contemporary

Marina Vaizey

London Rules – explicitly cover your arse – is the fifth in the most remarkable and mesmerising series of ...

Read more...

Roma Agrawal: Built review - solid love

Katherine Waters

"I've been known to stroke concrete," writes self-professed geek Roma Agrawal – and from the very beginning of her memoir-cum-introduction...

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 £49,000 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

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Insomnia, Channel 5 review - a chronicle of deaths foretold

A mixture of legal drama, medical mystery and psychological thriller with creepy supernatural overtones, Insomnia sometimes seems to be...

Album: Mark Stewart - The Fateful Symmetry

I met Mark Stewart once. It was on a platform at Clapham Junction, I wouldn’t normally approach a famous person like that, but I felt I had to pay...

First Person: country singer Tami Neilson on the superpower...

I was born Tamara Lee Neilson. I had an Uncle Kenny and an Aunt Dolly (who played guitar and banjo, respectively). I mean, did I really have a...

Album: Gwenno - Utopia

Stylistically, Utopia wears multiple faces. Opening cut “London 1757” drifts by like a twig floating upon an unhurried stream. Next, “...

Live Aid at 40: When Rock'n'Roll Took on the World...

“Bob’s not the kind of guy you can say no to,” said Sting, reminiscing about the origins of 1984’s Band Aid charity single “Do They Know It’s...

theartsdesk Q&A: actor Emma Mackey on 'Hot Milk...

Emma Mackey might have had her breakthrough role as a teenage tough cookie in Netflix's hit Series Sex Education (2019-20223), but there...

Blu-ray: A Hard Day's Night

Andrew Sarris, doyen of auteurist film critics, dubbed A Hard Day’s Night “the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals”. Wild over-...

Sabrina Carpenter, Hyde Park BST review - a sexy, sparkly, s...

Has Sabrina Carpenter officially conquered London? A year after bestie and fellow Disney alumni Taylor Swift declared the “Summer of Sabrina”...

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