book reviews and features
Michael Nath: The Treatment review - 'deeds, and language, such as men do use'
Sunday, 01 March 2020
Great writing about – or set in – London has one thing in common: voice. It’s tuned into the city’s multiple... Read more... |
Pete Paphides: Broken Greek review - top of the pop memoirs
Sunday, 01 March 2020
Think of the phrase “music ... Read more... |
'You’re Jewish. With a name like Neumann, you have to be'
Monday, 24 February 2020
It was during my first week at Tufts University in America, when I was 17, that I was told by a stranger that I was... Read more... |
Imagining Ireland, Barbican review - raising women's voices
Monday, 24 February 2020
Recent politics surround the EU and nationhood, fantasies of Irish Sea bridges and trading... Read more... |
Panikos Panayi: Migrant City review – the capital of the world
Sunday, 23 February 2020
Some menus never change. In 1910, the Loyal British Waiters Society came into being, prompted by “xenophobic resentment at the dominance of foreigners in the restaurant trade”. London’s German... Read more... |
Patricia Grace: Potiki review – a searching examination of human nature
Sunday, 23 February 2020
With the publication of her first work, Waiariki (1975), Patricia Grace became the author of the first ever collection of short stories by a Māori woman. In the four-and-a-half decades... Read more... |
Eimear McBride: Strange Hotel review - keycards to the heart of a woman in flight
Sunday, 09 February 2020
Hotels in fiction can serve as places of desolation or discovery; as escape hatches, or else punishment blocks. In her third novel, Eimear McBride channels this ambivalence but annexes it to... Read more... |
Jenny Offill: Weather review - the low hum of misgiving
Sunday, 09 February 2020
Neatly contained, truncated by decisive white space, Jenny Offill’s paragraphs – they have been called “fragments” and even “stanzas” – might be the first thing you notice about Weather,... Read more... |
Sophy Roberts: The Lost Pianos of Siberia review - a distant musical journey
Sunday, 09 February 2020
For travellers, “music is a passport, especially in Russia…” Borrowing an adage from the British diplomat Thomas... Read more... |
Francesca Wade: Square Haunting - Bloomsbury retold
Thursday, 06 February 2020
These days, Bloomsbury rests in a state of elegant somnolence. The ghosts of... Read more... |
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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...
A Thousand Blows, Disney+ review - Peaky Blinders comes to R...
Steven Knight is beginning to resemble the British version of Taylor Sheridan. While Sheridan has been saturating our...
Chamayou, BBC Philharmonic, Morlot, Bridgewater Hall, Manche...
The second of the Philharmonic’s Boulez-Ravel celebrations (birth centenary of the former, 150th of the latter) brought Bertrand...
The Capulets and the Montagues, English Touring Opera review...
A year ago, after a deeply disappointing Manon Lescaut at Hackney Empire, I wrote here that English Touring Opera had often excelled in...
Bilk, O2 Academy 2, Birmingham review - Essex rock'n...
Sol Abrahams, singer and guitarist for Essex rock’n’rollers Bilk, was suffering from a bit of guitar trouble in Birmingham on Friday evening. By...
Harry Hill, Wilton's Music Hall review - madcap comic o...
Harry Hill reminds us at one point during his latest touring show that he’s 60, but there’s no let-up in the energy he brings to ...
Album: Artemis - Arboresque
Spare a thought – please – for Leipzig-born pianist Jutta Hipp (1925-2003). In 1956, she became the very first woman to record albums in her own...
Hinds, St Lukes and the Winged Ox, Glasgow review - Spanish...
Hinds don't believe in God. They declared this as they surveyed the converted church that is St Luke's, and given the past few years you can...
Music Reissues Weekly: Diggin' For Gold Volume 14 - Nor...
In 1964, the Norwegian division of Philips Records began issuing singles labelled “Bergen Beat.” The picture sleeves of 45s by Davy Dean and the...
The Monkey review - a grisly wind-up
Longlegs’ trapdoor ending snapped tight on its clammy Lynchian mood, reconfiguring its Silence of the Lambs serial-killer yarn...