sun 14/09/2025

book reviews and features

Hanif Kureishi: The Nothing review - a glittering chamber of ice

Matthew Wright

Kureishi is mostly loved for his bittersweet panoramas of suburban London, ribald and piquant with satire. The Nothing discards that broad canvas and creeps into a glittering...

Read more...

Bella Bathurst: Sound, review - an illuminating book on deafness

Liz Thomson

Shelve with Oliver Sacks. In Sound: Stories of Hearing Lost and Found Bella Bathurst has written a fascinating and illuminating book on deafness. Of what it’s like to lose your hearing –...

Read more...

Sunday Book: Henry Marsh - Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery

Marina Vaizey

Is it true that the blob of jelly resembling convoluted grey matter that we carry around in our skulls is really what we are? And how we are, and why? This is the profound question that is...

Read more...

theartsdesk at The Hospital Club

theartsdesk

The Arts Desk is delighted to announce a new partnership with The Hospital Club in...

Read more...

Sunday Book: Nicholas Hytner - Balancing Acts

Jasper Rees

After the first preview of Mike Leigh’s play Two Thousand Years at the ...

Read more...

Sunday Book: Donna Leon - Earthly Remains

Liz Thomson

It’s 25 years this year since Donna Leon introduced us to Commissario Guido Brunetti, a man who in his way has done as much for...

Read more...

'What did you do?' Actors reveal their Shakespearean secrets

Julian Curry

Much of the brilliance of Shakespeare lies in the openness, or ambiguity, of his texts. Whereas a novelist will often describe a character, an action or a scene in the most minute detail,...

Read more...

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...

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