sun 14/09/2025

book reviews and features

Sarah Hall: Madame Zero review – eerie tales of calamity and change

Boyd Tonkin

Five thousand miles away from her native Lake District, I first understood the eerie magnetism of Sarah Hall’s fiction. As a regional judge for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, I’d travelled to...

Read more...

Enter theartsdesk's Young Reviewer of the Year Award

theartsdesk

The Hospital Club’s annual h.Club100 awards celebrate the most influential and innovative people working in the UK’s creative industries, with nominations from the worlds of film and fashion, art...

Read more...

Michael Connelly: The Late Show review - mesmerising and believable characters

Marina Vaizey

Readers have been committed fans since 1992, when the sometime crime reporter...

Read more...

Danny Goldberg: In Search of the Lost Chord review - 1967 well remembered

Liz Thomson

I was 10 in 1967 though I remember much about the year, indeed about the era, not least the release of Sgt Pepper and the first live global satellite broadcast, when the...

Read more...

Eureka: novelist Anthony Quinn on completing his acclaimed trilogy

Anthony Quinn

I am intrigued by those writers who plan their novels with the bristling rigour of a military strategist,...

Read more...

Jonathan Miles: St Petersburg review - culture and calamity

Marina Vaizey

Talk about survival: St Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad, now again St Petersburg, all the same...

Read more...

Chris Patten: First Confession - A Sort of Memoir review - remembrances of government and power

Liz Thomson

It’s 25 years since Chris Patten lost his seat as Conservative MP for Bath. The 1992 election was called by...

Read more...

Brenda Maddox: Reading the Rocks review - revelations of geology

Marina Vaizey

Reading the Rocks has a provocative subtitle, “How Victorian Geologists Discovered the Secret of Life”, indicating the role of...

Read more...

John Man: Amazons review - the real warrior women of the ancient world

mark Kidel

As Wonder Woman hits screens worldwide, the publication of a book that explores the myth and...

Read more...

David Sedaris: Theft By Finding review - comic literary talent of historic value

Matthew Wright

In a voice of distinctive, high-pitched nasal whimsy, comic essayist and memoirist David Sedaris finds humour with the precision of a mosquito after blood. British...

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 £49,000 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

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues review - comedy rock band f...

That difficult second documentary – or if you will, “rockumentary” – seems to have been especially challenging for...

Music Reissues Weekly: Robyn - Robyn 20th-Anniversary Editio...

Sometimes, record labels don’t like what those on their roster have recorded. Such was the case with BMG Sweden and Robin Carlsson who, as Robyn,...

Album: Twenty One Pilots - Breach

For the past decade, the Ohio alternative superstars Twenty One Pilots have cultivated a deep lore starting with 2015’s Blurryface, and...

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale review - an attemptedly eleg...

It can be a hostage to fortune to title anything “grand”, and so it proves with the last gasp of Julian Fellowes’s everyday story of...

BBC Proms: Ehnes, Sinfonia of London, Wilson review - aspect...

Critics (including this one) casually refer to John Wilson’s Sinfonia of London as an all-star outfit, an army made up of generals. This week I...

Album: Ed Sheeran - Play

“It’s a long way up from rock bottom/There’s been times I felt I could fall further.” So runs the opening line of Ed Sheeran’s eighth studio album...

Presteigne Festival 2025 review - new music is centre stage...

If you were a devotee of Dmitri Shostakovich whose only opportunity to attend some live performances marking this year’s 50th anniversary of his...

Islands review - sunshine noir serves an ace

From its ambiguous opening shot onwards, writer/director Jan-Ole Gerster’s Islands is a tricksy animal, which doesn’t just keep...

A Single Man, Linbury Theatre review - an anatomy of melanch...

Mind, body, body, mind. Medical science confirms the powerful two-way traffic between emotional and physical health. Nonetheless the idea of...

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