tue 13/05/2025

book reviews and features

Peggy Seeger: First Time Ever - A Memoir, review - a remarkable life

Liz Thomson

Seeger. A name to strike sparks with almost anyone, whether or not they have an interest in folk music...

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Niall Ferguson: The Square and the Tower review - of groups and power

Marina Vaizey

The controversial historian Niall Ferguson is the author of some dozen books, including substantial...

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Alan Hollinghurst: The Sparsholt Affair - pictures at an exhibition, with telling gaps

David Nice

Television has paid its dues to the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act - rather feebly, with some rotten acting, in Man in an Orange Shirt; brilliantly, with mostly superb...

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Henning Mankell: After the Fire review - of death and redemption

Marina Vaizey

The dour, reclusive disgraced doctor Fredrik Welin has appeared once before in Henning Mankell’s work, in The...

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h.Club 100 Awards 2017: The Winners

theartsdesk

At a festive ceremony on Tuesday night at The Hospital Club in central London, the winners...

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Orhan Pamuk: Istanbul, Memories and the City review – a masterpiece upgraded

Boyd Tonkin

Along with Balzac’s Paris and Dickens’s London, Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul now ranks as one of the most illustrious author-trademarked cities in literary history. Yet, as...

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Roddy Doyle: Smile review - return of the repressed

Boyd Tonkin

Although he made his name with the generally upbeat grooves and licks of his Barrytown Trilogy, Roddy Doyle has often played Irish family and social life as a blues full of sorrow and regret. In...

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Claire Tomalin: A Life of My Own review - the biographer on herself

Marina Vaizey

The title says it all, or at least quite a lot. Luminously intelligent, an exceptionally hard worker, bilingual in French, a gifted...

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Anne Applebaum: Red Famine review - hope around a heart of darkness

David Nice

Hands both sensitive and surgical are needed to guide a reader into the heart of the 20th century’s second biggest genocide and out again. Anne Applebaum is the right person for a...

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Adam Macqueen: The Lies of the Land review - light, but enlightening

Liz Thomson

We are now firmly in the post-truth era as defined by Oxford Dictionaries: "adjective - relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping...

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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

House of Games, Hampstead Theatre review - adapted Mamet scr...

There is so much that is right about Jonathan Kent’s new production of House of Games – the casting, the staging, the...

Stile Antico, Wigmore Hall review - a glorious birthday cele...

There was a wonderful festal spirit at the Wigmore Hall last night, as the vocal ensemble Stile Antico ran through a Greatest Hits selection in...

PUP, SWG3, Glasgow review - controlled chaos from Canadian p...

According to PUP lead singer Stefan Babcock, the Toronto foursome practiced together a grand total of twice before embarking on their current UK...

Zoe Lyons, Touring - midlife, without the crisis

Zoe Lyons knows her audience; as a few shoutouts confirmed, many of them are long-time fans, and have had lives with similar highs and...

The Last Musician of Auschwitz review - a haunting testament...

“It is so disgraceful, what happened there,” says Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, in a comment that is the understatement of the century. She is referring...

Giulio Cesare, The English Concert, Bicket, Barbican review...

Is Giulio Cesare in Egitto, to give the full title, Handel’s best and shapeliest opera? Glyndebourne’s revival of the legendary David...

Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - premiere...

Huw Watkins’ Concerto for Orchestra, the fourth new work of his to be commissioned and premiered by the Hallé and Sir Mark Elder, is...

DVD/Blu-ray: Slade in Flame

Over the years Slade in Flame has been hailed as one of the greatest rock movies (albeit rarely seen or screened), up...

Music Reissues Weekly: Roots Rocking Zimbabwe

“Soul Scene,” by Echoes Limited, is built from elements of the James Brown sound. But it’s put together in such a way that the result is...

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