book reviews and features
Martin Gayford: Modernists & Mavericks review - people, places and paint
Sunday, 22 April 2018
Back in the early Sixties Lucian Freud was living in Clarendon Crescent, a condemned row of houses in... Read more... |
Barbara Ehrenreich: Natural Causes review - counterintuitive wisdom on the big issues
Sunday, 15 April 2018
“Wham bam, thank you, ma’am” might be one response to this polemical, wry, hilarious and affecting series of counterintuitive essays by one of the most original and unexpected thinkers around.... Read more... |
Amy Sackville: Painter to the King review - portrait of the artist in shadow and light
Sunday, 15 April 2018
Inevitably, the story begins and (almost) ends with Las Meninas. Inspired by the art and life of Diego Velázquez, Amy Sackville tops and tails her third novel with his endlessly enigmatic... Read more... |
Richard Vinen: The Long ’68 review - more impartial than impassioned
Sunday, 08 April 2018
Born into the late 1950s, I was too young to be a 68er, though I remember watching it all on TV: the protests in Red... Read more... |
Irvine Welsh: Dead Men's Trousers review - Renton and Begbie make it safely to middle age
Sunday, 01 April 2018
When it came out in 1993, Trainspotting was probably the most shocking novel since Lady Chatterley's Lover. It’s rumoured to have missed out on a Booker shortlisting... Read more... |
Listed: The 10 Best Biblical Novels
Sunday, 25 March 2018
From the myths of the Old Testament to the miracles of the New, the Bible has been as much a source of... Read more... |
Lynne Murphy: The Prodigal Tongue review - two nations divided by a common language?
Sunday, 25 March 2018
For as long as I can remember, and long before I set foot in America for the first time at age 24, I have... Read more... |
Richard Sennett: Building and Dwelling - Ethics for the City review
Sunday, 18 March 2018
All the great sociologists, in the tradition of Georg Simmel, Max Weber and others, are on a mission. They cannot help wishing to change the world. Science should be value-free, but the social... Read more... |
Agnès Poirier: Left Bank review - Paris in war and peace
Sunday, 11 March 2018
There are too many awestruck cultural histories of... Read more... |
Matthew Sweet: Operation Chaos review - paranoia and insanity in the Cold War
Sunday, 11 March 2018
In 2017 the documentary series The Vietnam War told the story, from soup to nuts, of America’s misadventure in south-east Asia. It now seems the comprehensive... Read more... |
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latest in today
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 ...
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 –...