book reviews and features
Al Alvarez: 'If I drop dead this minute, I’ve had a terrific time'
Monday, 23 September 2019
We like to think of ourselves as a nation of eccentrics, but some take their patriotic duties more seriously than others. Al Alvarez –... Read more... |
Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey: She Said review – better than the movies
Sunday, 22 September 2019
October 5th in the United States is a day for righteous rage. In 2016 it marked the release of the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape in which Donald Trump made his now-infamous “grab them... Read more... |
10 Questions for author Martin Gayford
Saturday, 21 September 2019
Over the past four decades Martin Gayford, The Spectator’s art critic, has travelled the world, been published in an amazing range of print and digital publications and written more than... Read more... |
Martin Gayford: The Pursuit of Art review - devotion, distilled
Sunday, 15 September 2019
This is a book about experiences that go beyond reading about art. Martin Gayford’s 20 short essays about press trips and self-motivated travel concern meetings – in the flesh, in real time and... Read more... |
Margaret Atwood: The Testaments review - pertinent but lacklustre
Sunday, 08 September 2019
You will doubtless have seen the protestors who dress as Gilean handmaids to protest anti-... Read more... |
William Dalrymple: The Anarchy review – masterly history of the first rogue corporation
Sunday, 08 September 2019
Serious historians don’t much care for counter-factual speculations. Readers, however, often enjoy them. So here’s mine. In 1780, the seemingly invincible forces of the East India Company had... Read more... |
A. N. Wilson: Prince Albert review - entertaining bio is a total treat
Sunday, 01 September 2019
Albertopolis! The Royal Albert Hall, the Albert Memorial and countless Albert Squares, Roads and Streets all commemorate Britain’s uncrowned... Read more... |
José Eduardo Agualusa: The Society of Reluctant Dreamers review - vivid visions towards a free Angola
Sunday, 01 September 2019
Reality follows dreams in José Eduardo Agualusa’s latest experiment in quixotic political fable. The book opens with journalist Daniel Benchimol waking at the Rainbow Hotel in Angola’s capital,... Read more... |
Selina Todd: Tastes of Honey review – Salford dreams of freedom
Sunday, 25 August 2019
In the late 1950s, a photo technician from Salford suddenly became “the most famous teenager in Britain”. Shelagh Delaney was 19 when she sent the script of A Taste of Honey to the... Read more... |
Karl Marlantes: Deep River review - growing pains of a nation of immigrants
Sunday, 25 August 2019
Karl Marlantes’s Deep River is an all-American novel. And why should it not be? Marlantes is an all-American... Read more... |
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I.S.S. review - sci-fi with a sting in the tail
Earthrise, the 1968 Apollo 8 photograph of our small island of a planet, taken from the Moon’s surface, transformed our vision of our...
Album: St Vincent - All Born Screaming
The thing with Annie Clark, better known as the triple-Grammy-winning iconoclast St Vincent, is that much like an actual saint the multi...
Eye to Eye: Homage to Ernst Scheidegger, MASI Lugano review...
With a troubled gaze and a lived-in face, the portrait of artist Alberto Giacometti on a withdrawn...
Christian Pierre La Marca, Yaman Okur, St Martin-in-The-Fiel...
The French cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca confesses that – like so many classical musicians...
That They May Face The Rising Sun review - lyrical adaptatio...
In director Pat Collins’s lyrical adaptation of John McGahern’s last novel, with cinematography by Richard Kendrick, the landscape is perhaps the...
Album: Pet Shop Boys - Nonetheless
This album came with an absolutely enormous promo campaign. As well as actual advertising there were “Audience With…” events, and specials on BBC...
Ridout, Włoszczowska, Crawford, Lai, Posner, Wigmore Hall re...
Advice to young musicians, as given at several “how to market your career” seminars: don’t begin a biography with “one of the finest xxxs of his/...
Stephen review - a breathtakingly good first feature by a mu...
Stephen is the first feature film by multi-media artist Melanie Manchot and it’s the best debut film I’ve seen since Steve McQueen’s ...
Album: Mdou Moctar - Funeral for Justice
Despite its title, Mdou Moctar’s new album is no slow-paced mournful dirge. In fact, it is louder, faster and more overtly political than any of...
Blue Lights Series 2, BBC One review - still our best cop sh...
The first season of Blue Nights was so close to ...