book reviews and features
Sunday Book: Alan Bennett - Keeping On Keeping On
Sunday, 23 October 2016
To settle down on a darkening evening with a new volume of Alan Bennett is to be in the company of an old friend. Someone you don’t see as often as you’d like but with whom you immediately pick up... Read more... |
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 Q&A: Novelist Hilary Mantel
Monday, 19 January 2015
Hilary Mantel is a maker of literary history. Wolf Hall, an action-packed 650-page brick of a book about the rise and rise of Thomas Cromwell, won the Man Booker Prize in 2009. Its... Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Music Reissues Weekly: Ferkat Al Ard - Oghneya
Oghneya opens with the extraordinary “Matar Al Sabah.” Jazzy, with an overt Brazilian feel it gently swings and swoons....
Mick Jagger: My Life as a Rolling Stone review, BBC Two - th...
At the beginning of this film, Mick Jagger says: “What most...
The Making of Pinocchio, LIFT 2022, Battersea Arts Centre re...
Pinocchio is one of our most irreverent metamorphosis stories, and in this visually ingenious blend of...
The Undeclared War, Channel 4 review - how would the UK cope...
As the world lurches ever deeper into multiple manifestations of chaos,...
The White Card, Soho Theatre review - expelling the audience...
We’re in New York City, in an upscale loft...
Katya Adaui: Here Be Icebergs review - odd relations
The title of Katya Adaui’s debut collection in English is taken from one of the 12...
Joe Lycett, Eventim Apollo review - prankster goes long-form
Joe Lycett’s career was on an upward trajectory when he took on hosting duties on The Great British Sewing Bee, and the crafting show...
The Bobby Lees, Hare & Hounds, Birmingham review - rock’...
In a week when all kinds of people were going bonkers over an octogenarian playing songs from over 50 years ago to tens of thousands of people in...
Album: Imagine Dragons - Mercury - Act 2
“What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” That’s the rule, right? Unless, of course, what happens is that you form a...