book reviews and features
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Wednesday, 01 October 2025
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com. It followed some hectic and intensive months when a disparate and... Read more... |
Patrick McGilligan: Woody Allen - A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham review - New York stories
Wednesday, 09 April 2025
Patrick McGilligan’s biography of Woody Allen weighs in at an eye-popping 800 pages, yet he waits only for... Read more... |
Howard Amos: Russia Starts Here review - East meets West, via the Pskov region
Tuesday, 01 April 2025
Russia Starts Here: Real Lives in the Ruin of Empire, the journalist Howard Amos’ first book, is a prescient and fascinating examination of the borderlands of a bellicose nation. Focusing... Read more... |
Henry Gee: The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Why Our Species is on the Edge of Extinction review - survival instincts
Saturday, 15 March 2025
Henry Gee’s previous book, A Brief History of Life on Earth, made an interestingly downbeat read for a title that won the UK’s science book prize. He emphasised that a... Read more... |
Jonathan Buckley: One Boat review - a shore thing
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
One Boat, Jonathan Buckley’s 13th novel, captures a series of encounters at the water’s edge: characters converge... Read more... |
Jessica Duchen: Myra Hess - National Treasure review - well-told life of a pioneering musician
Tuesday, 25 February 2025
Myra Hess was one of the most important figures in British cultural life in the mid-20th century: the pre-eminent... Read more... |
Shon Faye: Love in Exile review - the greatest feeling
Tuesday, 18 February 2025
As Valentine’s Day crests around us, and lonely hearts come out of their winter hibernation, what better time to publish writer and journalist Shon Faye’s second book Love in Exile? In... Read more... |
Philip Marsden: Under a Metal Sky review - rock and awe
Tuesday, 11 February 2025
Working on materials was basic to human culture from the start: chipping at flint to make a hand-axe; fashioning bone or wood; drying hides. In time, people discovered that some materials,... Read more... |
Jacqueline Feldman: Precarious Lease review - living on the edge
Saturday, 08 February 2025
Taking on some of the contingent, nebulous quality of its subject, Jacqueline Feldman’s Precarious Lease examines the beginning... Read more... |
Catherine Airey: Confessions review - the crossroads we bear
Tuesday, 28 January 2025
Anglo-Irish author Catherine Airey’s first novel, Confessions, is a puzzle, a game of family secrets... Read more... |
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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...
MacMillan St John Passion, Boylan, National Symphony Orchest...
Never make your mind up too soon about any large-scale work by a genius. Back in 2010, I had my doubts about James MacMillan’s first Passion,...
Neil Young: Coastal review - the old campaigner gets back on...
As well as generating a ceaseless stream of albums, whether live, studio or culled from his copious archives, Neil Young has also amassed a fairly...
First Person: St John's College choral conductor Christ...
When I arrived at St John’s College, Cambridge, in April 2023, it was a daunting prospect to be taking over the reins of a choir with such a...
Album: Maria Somerville - Luster
Luster’s fifth track “Halo” has the lyric “mystical creatures… of Éirne,” referencing the Irish river and lough of the same name – both...
The Penguin Lessons review - Steve Coogan and his flippered...
As if penguins didn’t have enough to fret about with impending tariffs on exporting guano to America, here comes Steve Coogan to ruffle their...
Ghosts, Lyric Hammersmith Theatre - turns out, they do fuck...
A single sofa is all we have on stage to attract our eye - the signifier of intimate family evenings, chummy breakfast TV and,...
Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story - compelling portrait...
“I was born with the ability and the demon to write. I have been punished for it constantly.” Written and directed by Sinéad O’Shea, this...
Album: Ronny Graupe's Szelest - Newfoundland Tristesse
In this new album, three top-flight musicians based in Berlin, guitarist Ronny Graupe, Lucia Cadotsch (voice) and Kit Downes (piano) work...