book reviews and features
h 100 Awards: Publishing and Writing - other stories, other voices
Monday, 20 August 2018
If history repeats itself, better hope that it corrects its mistakes as well. This year’s nominations for the... Read more... |
Roger Scruton: Music as an Art review - how to listen?
Sunday, 19 August 2018
Hegel, Kant, David Hume, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Leibniz are all adduced, referred to, and paraphrased, and that’s just for starters. Add Rameau, Schubert, Beethoven, Benjamin Britten and the... Read more... |
Annie Ernaux: The Years, review - time’s flow
Sunday, 05 August 2018
“When you were our age, how did you imagine your life? What did you hope for?” It is a video of a classroom south-east of the Périphérique separating Paris from the working-class suburbs. The... Read more... |
Rachel Heng: Suicide Club review - skin-deep dystopia
Sunday, 29 July 2018
When Lea is nervous she picks at the skin near the nail of her thumb. When she draws blood the wound repairs instantly because she is a member of the Second Wave endowed with SmartBlood™ and... Read more... |
Stella Tillyard: The Great Level review – reason and passion in the Fens and Virginia
Sunday, 22 July 2018
The Fens of East Anglia, and the lonely coasts that skirt them, usually sit well below the horizon of mainstream culture. Yet when England’s flatlands and their maritime margins do find a literary... Read more... |
Guy Stagg, The Crossway review – a gripping pilgrimage through faith and doubt
Sunday, 15 July 2018
On new year’s day in 2013, Guy Stagg set out to walk alone from Canterbury to Jerusalem. He planned this journey, which would take ten months, cross 11 countries and cover 5500km, in the wake of... Read more... |
Georges Simenon: The Krull House review – timely revival for a noir masterwork
Sunday, 08 July 2018
Georges Simenon began to write his Inspector Maigret mysteries in the early 1930s. Not long after after, the famously productive Belgian-born novelist – who could polish off a Maigret inside a... Read more... |
Listed: 10 classic tales of the city
Sunday, 01 July 2018
Now is the time of year when weary travellers find themselves in some sun-strafed piazza, gazing in bemusement at a world-renowned monument and wondering why on earth they came. Hectored by... Read more... |
Katharine Kilalea: OK, Mr Field review - architecture and alienation on the Cape Town coast
Sunday, 24 June 2018
Modern novels with an architectural theme have, to say the least, a mixed pedigree. At their finest, as in Thomas Bernhard’s Correction, the fluidity and ambiguity of prose fiction... Read more... |
Sarah Langford: In Your Defence review - messy lives
Sunday, 24 June 2018
When Sarah Langford goes to work, she puts on warpaint and wig and acts. But she is not an actor. She defends those who might or might not be guilty of the crimes with with they’ve been charged,... 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.
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Chamayou, BBC Philharmonic, Morlot, Bridgewater Hall, Manche...
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A year ago, after a deeply disappointing Manon Lescaut at Hackney Empire, I wrote here that English Touring Opera had often excelled in...
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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 ...
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...
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...