book reviews and features
Harriet Walter on Brutus and Other Heroines
Sunday, 23 October 2016
A part we have played is like a person we once met, grew to know, became intimately enmeshed with and finally moved away from. Some of these characters remain friends, others are like ex-lovers... Read more... |
Sunday Book: I Am Brian Wilson
Sunday, 16 October 2016
For decades Brian Wilson was depicted as the mad, lost genius of the Beach Boys, but these days, at 74, he's looking more like one of pop's great survivors. After all, he has comprehensively... Read more... |
Sunday Book: Carlo Rovelli - Reality Is Not What It Seems
Sunday, 16 October 2016
Scientists today tend to patronise the early Greek philosophers who, 2500 years ago, inaugurated enquiry into the nature of things. The Atomic Theory? A lucky guess, they allege. But Carlo Rovelli... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Garrison Keillor
Monday, 27 June 2016
It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, and has been for the past 42 years, ever since Garrison Keillor first reported on the town's goings-on in his weekly radio show A Prairie Home Companion... Read more... |
Who was St Clair Bayfield?
Thursday, 05 May 2016
This week Stephen Frears's film about Florence Foster Jenkins opens. It will bring to the widest attention yet the story of a New York socialite who couldn’t sing and yet did sing, infamously, to... Read more... |
Søren Dahlgaard’s Dough Portraits
Sunday, 03 January 2016
Can a portrait really be a portrait if we can’t see a person’s face? And what if the reason we can’t see their face is that it is covered with a lump of dough? Is it a joke? And if it is a joke,... Read more... |
Extract: The Time Traveller’s Guide to British Theatre
Thursday, 23 July 2015
Theatre is one of the glories of British culture, a melting pot of creativity and innovation. Beginning with the coronation of Elizabeth I and ending with the televised crowning of the current... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Günter Grass
Tuesday, 14 April 2015
The Nobel prize-winning writer, playwright and artist Günter Grass was arguably the best-known German-language author of the second half of the 20th century. Kate Connolly met him in May 2010 in... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Port Eliot Festival
Monday, 28 July 2014
Remember when festivals were only about what they were ostensibly about? When, say, Reading offered nothing beyond hard rock bar disgusting toilets, overpriced hamburgers and the prospect of a... Read more... |
Extracts: John Tusa - Pain in the Arts
Monday, 16 June 2014
In the midst of ferment as the arts world faces fast-shrinking public subsidy, Sir John Tusa, former managing director of the BBC World Service and the Barbican Arts Centre, publishes this week a... 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...
Interview: Polar photographer Sebastian Copeland on a lifeti...
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An album is one thing, a live show is another. A truism of course, but one which is inescapable during this London date by the Rotterdam-based...
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Blu-ray: Drugstore Cowboy
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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...
Fledermaus, Irish National Opera review - sex, please, we...
Let’s finally face the elephant in the room: the most popular Viennese operetta, packed with hit numbers, no longer works on the stage as a whole...
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...
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 ...