book reviews and features
Ali Smith: Spring review – green shoots, dark fears
Sunday, 31 March 2019
Stopped in the street for a vox pop by a BBC interviewer keen to “fill your air” with strife and bile, a character in Spring retorts that “there’s a world out there bigger than Brexit,... Read more... |
Karl Ove Knausgaard: So Much Longing in So Little Space review – smiles more than screams
Sunday, 24 March 2019
Around the works canteen, a dozen huge wall-paintings depict, in bright cheerful colours spread across radically stylised forms, happy scenes of women and men at work and play beside a sunlit sea... Read more... |
David Hepworth: A Fabulous Creation review - how vinyl soothed our souls and defined our being
Sunday, 17 March 2019
Record Store Day is now a fixture on the calendar, a key element in “the vinyl revival”, and this year – 13 April –... Read more... |
Fiona MacCarthy: Walter Gropius review - a master of modernism
Sunday, 10 March 2019
The centenary of the founding of the Bauhaus (literally, “Building House”) art school is on us, prompting publications and exhibitions worldwide. Subtitled “Visionary Founder of the Bauhaus”,... Read more... |
Robert Menasse: The Capital review - much more than just an EU satire
Sunday, 10 March 2019
Forty years ago this July, Simone Veil gave her inaugural speech as first President of the European Parliament. She had many issues to include. Peace came first; as a survivor of Auschwitz and the... Read more... |
Sadie Jones: The Snakes review - lacking feeling
Sunday, 03 March 2019
Bea and Dan are a young married couple. They have a mortgage on their small flat in Holloway and met while out clubbing in Peckham. She’s a plain-looking, modest and hard-working psychotherapist;... Read more... |
George Szirtes: The Photographer at Sixteen review – how grief becomes art
Sunday, 24 February 2019
How long does it take for grief to crystallise into art? No timetable can ever set that date. The poet George Szirtes’s mother took her own life, after previous attempts, during the hot summer of... Read more... |
Sam Bourne: To Kill the Truth review - taut thriller of big ideas
Sunday, 24 February 2019
Great libraries burning, historians murdered: someone somewhere is removing the past by obliterating the ways... Read more... |
Richard J Evans: Eric Hobsbawm - A Life in History review - mesmerisingly readable
Sunday, 17 February 2019
This is an astonishing book: in its breadth, depth and detail and also in its almost palpable, and sometimes unpalatable, admiration of its... Read more... |
Tana French: The Wych Elm review - a lucky man and his downfall
Sunday, 17 February 2019
A Tana French crime novel is never just a thriller. Probably more acclaimed in the USA than the UK (she gets rave reviews in the New Yorker and the New York Times) French always... 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...
Chris McCausland, Winchester Theatre Royal review - Strictly...
By all accounts Chris McCausland had to be persuaded to take part in the most recent series of Strictly Come Dancing, which he won with...
Album: The Weather Station - Humanhood
Four of Humanhood’s 13 tracks are short, impressionistic mood pieces. Between 48 seconds and just-over a minute-and-a-half long, they...
Oliver!, Gielgud Theatre review - Lionel Bart's 1960 ma...
Into a world of grooming gangs, human trafficking and senior prelates resigning over child abuse cases comes Oliver!, Lionel...
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In the late Eighties and Nineties, Tony Slattery became one of the most ubiquitous faces on television, appearing regularly on Whose Line Is...
Album: Ethel Cain - Perverts
Ethel Cain’s Perverts is a dark and experimental follow-up to her debut album, Preacher’s Daughter. It takes listeners on a...
Leif Ove Andsnes, Wigmore Hall review - colour and courage,...
Forthright and upright, powerful and lucid, the frank and bold pianism of Leif Ove Andsnes took his Wigmore Hall audience from Norway to Poland (...
American Primeval, Netflix review - nightmare on the Wild Fr...
It seems The Osmonds may not have been the worst outrage perpetrated on an unsuspecting public by the Mormons. American Primeval is set...
Chamayou, BBC Philharmonic, Wigglesworth, Bridgewater Hall,...
Top Brownie points for the BBC Philharmonic for being one of the first (maybe the first?) to celebrate the birth centenary of Pierre Boulez this...
The Maids, Jermyn Street Theatre review - new broom sweeps c...
There are two main reasons to revive classics. The first is that they are really good; the second is that they have something to...