book reviews and features
Timothy Day: I Saw Eternity the Other Night review - heavenly harmony, earthly discord
Sunday, 30 December 2018
In 1955, Sylvia Plath attended the Advent Carol Service at King’s College in Cambridge. Like countless other visitors, listeners and viewers before and since, she was entranced by “the tall chapel... Read more... |
Ed Vulliamy: When Words Fail review - the band plays on
Sunday, 23 December 2018
If you're seeking ideas for new playlists and diverse suggestions for reading - and when better to look than at this time of year? - then beware: you may be overwhelmed by the infectious... Read more... |
Boris Akunin: Black City review - a novel to sharpen the wits
Sunday, 16 December 2018
It is 1914 – a fateful year for assassinations, war and revolution. The fictional Erast Petrovich Fandorin,... Read more... |
Global fiction: the pick of 2018
Sunday, 09 December 2018
If you believe the bulk of the “books of the year” features that drift like stray tinsel across the media at this time of year, Britain’s literary taste-makers only enjoy the flavours of the... Read more... |
Matthew Dennison: Eternal Boy review – the banker who stayed forever young
Sunday, 25 November 2018
In Ian McEwan’s 1987 novel The Child in Time, a high-powered publisher and politician named Charles Darke quits his posts, regresses to a child-like state, and frolics in the woods like a... Read more... |
Daša Drndić: Belladonna review - a tragicomic journey into Europe's darkness
Sunday, 18 November 2018
Daša Drndić, the Croatian author who died in June aged 71, has posthumously won the second Warwick Prize for Women in Translation for her coruscating novel Belladonna. The award, set up... Read more... |
Dramatic Exchanges review - a brilliant slice of theatre history
Sunday, 11 November 2018
Dramatic Exchanges is a dazzling array of correspondence, stretching over more than a century, between... Read more... |
Michael Connelly: Dark Sacred Night review - a pairing of loner detectives
Sunday, 04 November 2018
The master of the Southern California... Read more... |
Michael Caine: Blowing the Bloody Doors Off review - an actor's handbook, annotated by experience
Sunday, 28 October 2018
What a charmer! An irresistible combination of diffidence and confidence, Michael Caine is so much more than Alfie... Read more... |
Julian Baggini: How the World Thinks review - a whirlwind tour of ideas
Sunday, 21 October 2018
The intrepid philosopher Julian Baggini has travelled the world, going to academic conferences, interviewing scores of practicing philosophers from academics to gurus, trying to figure out and pin... Read more... |
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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 ...
Sabine Devieilhe, Mathieu Pordoy, Wigmore Hall review - ench...
Sabine Devieilhe, as with many other great sopranos, elicits much fan worship, with no less than three encores at her recent Wigmore Hall recital...
Jonn Elledge: A History of the World in 47 Borders review -...
In A History of the World in 47 Borders, Jonn Elledge takes an ostensibly dry subject – how maps and boundaries have shaped our world –...
DVD/Blu-Ray: Priscilla
There’s a scene in Priscilla where Elvis stands above his wife, who is scrambling to put her clothes in a suitcase. Priscilla has just...
Špaček, BBC Philharmonic, Bihlmaier, Bridgewater Hall, Manch...
Billed as a “Viennese Whirl”, this programme showed that there are different kinds of music that may be known to the orchestral canon as coming...
Banging Denmark, Finborough Theatre review - lively but conf...
What would happen if a notorious misogynist actually fell in love? With a glacial Danish librarian? And decided his best means of...
Album: Fred Hersch - Silent, Listening
The previous solo piano solo album from Fred Hersch, one of the world’s great...
Music Reissues Weekly: Linda Smith - I So Liked Spring, Noth...
Three years ago, the release of Till Another Time 1988-1996 generated a thumbs up. A compilation of recordings by the Baltimore and/or...