wed 23/07/2025

book reviews and features

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages of love and support

Tom Birchenough

...

Read more...

Tom Raworth: Cancer review - truthfulness

Jack Barron

I recently heard a BBC Radio 4 presenter use the troubling phrase: "Not everyone agreed on the reality of that." Once the domain of Andre Breton’s Manifeste du surréalisme, such...

Read more...

Ian Leslie: John and Paul - A Love Story in Songs review - help!

John Carvill

Do we need any more Beatles books? The answer is: that’s the wrong question. What we need is more Beatles books that are worth reading. As the musician and music historian Bob Stanley pointed out...

Read more...

Samuel Arbesman: The Magic of Code review - the spark ages

Jon Turney

The slightly overwrought subtitle, "How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World and Shapes Our Future", gives a good indication how computer enthusiast Sam Arbesman...

Read more...

Zsuzsanna Gahse: Mountainish review - seeking refuge

Leila Greening

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

John Carvill

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

India Lewis

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

Jon Turney

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

Leila Greening

One Boat, Jonathan Buckley’s 13th novel, captures a series of encounters at the water’s edge: characters converge...

Read more...

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

theartsdesk

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...

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... ...
Tosca, Clonter Opera review - beauty and integrity in miniat...

At first sight, it seemed that Clonter Opera’s decision to tackle Tosca this year might be a leap too far. Its once-a-year complete...

Album: Paul Weller - Find El Dorado

Paul Weller occupies a strange place in the cultural sphere. Especially since he was adopted as an elder statesman of Britpop in the mid 1990s, he...

BBC Proms: McCarthy, Bournemouth SO, Wigglesworth review - s...

It started like Sunday afternoon band concert on a seaside promenade, a massive ensemble playing it light. But while there were several too many...

theartsdesk Q&A: writer and actor Mark Gatiss on 'B...

Having played Sherlock Holmes’s politically involved older brother Mycroft in the BBC’s hit crime series Sherlock...

Ballard, Prime Video review - there's something rotten...

Following the success of its screen version of Michael Connelly’s veteran detective Harry Bosch, starring Titus Welliver,...

Don't Rock the Boat, The Mill at Sonning review - all a...

Now 45 years in the past, its dazzling star gone a decade or so, The Long Good Friday is a monument of British cinema....

Blu-ray: The Rebel / The Punch and Judy Man

Comedian Tony Hancock’s vertiginous rise and fall is neatly traced in the two films he completed in the early 1960s. The warning signs were...

Bookish, U&Alibi review - sleuthing and skulduggery in a...

As a sometime writer of Poirot, Sherlock and Christmas ghost stories,...

Album: Spafford Campbell - Tomorrow Held

Guitarist Louis Campbell and fiddle player Owen Spafford started playing together as teenagers in the National Youth Folk Ensemble when Sam...

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