sun 27/04/2025

book reviews and features

Sunday Book: Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

Jasper Rees

The jacket designs of Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole thrillers don’t muck about. The novelist’s name with its...

Read more...

Michelangelo's Madonna and Child

Alison Cole

Michelangelo's Taddei tondo, which depicts the Madonna and Child with the Infant St John in a rocky landscape, is the only Michelangelo marble in Britain. Currently one of the stars of the...

Read more...

Sunday Book: Jean Hanff Korelitz - The Devil and Webster

Matthew Wright

Naomi Roth, president of Webster College, Massachusetts, has come a long way since readers first made her acquaintance in Korelitz’s second...

Read more...

Brighton Festival 2017: 12 Free Events

Thomas H Green

The Brighton Festival, which takes place every May, is renowned for its plethora of free events. The 2017 Festival is curated by Guest Director Kate Tempest, the poet, writer and performer,...

Read more...

Sunday Book: Min Kym - Gone: A Girl, a Violin, a Life Unstrung

Adam Sweeting

“What’s it like to be a child prodigy?” is a question asked by violinist Min Kym several times...

Read more...

Sunday Book: Christian Madsbjerg - Sensemaking

Peter Forbes

Two pernicious practices dominate Christian Madsbjerg's Sensemaking: The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm: algorithm addiction and fake philosophy. The author thinks...

Read more...

Sunday Book: Yrsa Sigurdardóttir - The Legacy

David Nice

Anyone who's followed Yrsa's earlier novels, many of them featuring down-to-earth attorney Thora...

Read more...

Sunday Book: Helen Dunmore - Birdcage Walk

Boyd Tonkin

Birdcage Walk in Bristol really exists. It runs under an arched canopy of branches though a long-disused graveyard in Clifton. At this eerie spot, all that remains of the blitzed church of St...

Read more...

Sunday Book: George Saunders - Lincoln in the Bardo

Markie Robson-Scott

George Saunders has written a historical novel. Of course, this being Saunders, author of four volumes of...

Read more...

Sunday Book: Yiyun Li - Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life

Liz Thomson

Yiyun Li’s fiction comes garlanded in praise from authors and journals that don’t ladle it out carelessly, so it feels almost churlish to cavil over a memoir written during the course of two years...

Read more...

Pages

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

The future of Arts Journalism

 

You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!

We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £33,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d

And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.

 

latest in today

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

Music Reissues Weekly: The Hamburg Repertoire

The blurb on the front of the double-CD set The Hamburg Repertoire says it collects “The original recordings of songs...

Philharmonia, Alsop, RFH / Levit, Abramović, QEH review - mi...

“Let the music guide your imagination” was never going to be the slogan of the Southbank Centre’s Multitudes festival. Its 13 events...

Ben and Imo, Orange Tree Theatre review - vibrant, strongly...

Back in 2009, there were Ben and Wystan on stage (Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art). Last year came Ben and Master David Hemmings (Kevin...

Stelios review - Athenian rhapsody in blues

The English title of a new film about the legendary singer-guitarist Stelios Kazantzidis, who popularised rebetiko, which is often called “the...

Album: Dr Robert & Matt Deighton - The Instant Garden

There’s this mod milieu, harking back to the Eighties. Weller at the forefront; Dr Robert and his Blow Monkeys; all righteously hate Thatcher;...

The Accountant 2 review - belated return of Ben Affleck...

It’s been nine years since Ben Affleck’s original portrayal of Christian Wolff in The Accountant, who’s not only an accountant but also a...

The Inseparables, Finborough Theatre review - uneven portrai...

The Finborough has once again performed the miracle of creating a whole world in its intimate space: this time, inter-war France, where...

The Ugly Stepsister review - gleeful Grimm revamp

Although both of the Brothers Grimm died around 1860, they still insist on getting dozens of film and TV credits in each decade of our...

newsletter

Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday!

Simply enter your email address in the box below

View previous newsletters