book reviews and features
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 at the Port Eliot Festival
Monday, 28 July 2014
Remember when festivals were only about what they were ostensibly about? When, say, Reading offered nothing beyond hard rock bar disgusting toilets, overpriced hamburgers and the prospect of a... Read more... |
Extracts: John Tusa - Pain in the Arts
Monday, 16 June 2014
In the midst of ferment as the arts world faces fast-shrinking public subsidy, Sir John Tusa, former managing director of the BBC World Service and the Barbican Arts Centre, publishes this week a... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Biographer Claire Tomalin on Charles Dickens
Monday, 03 February 2014
The tally of Charles Dickens’s biographers grows ever closer to 100. The English language’s most celebrated novelist repays repeated study, of course, because both his life and his work are so... Read more... |
'Books have been my life': Doris Lessing
Sunday, 17 November 2013
Doris Lessing’s storm-tossed life would make a stirring biopic. She spent her early years on an isolated farm in the Southern Rhodesian veldt, abandoned the children of her first marriage to take... Read more... |
10 Questions for Count Arthur Strong
Monday, 11 November 2013
Autumn is a season of tumbling leaves, dark afternoons and of course fatuous memoirs from people off the telly. But every so often the world is taken by surprise, less by autumn itself than by the... Read more... |
Extract: George Harrison - Behind the Locked Door
Saturday, 12 October 2013
Following the completion of the White Album, and the conclusion of recording sessions in Los Angeles with new Apple signing Jackie Lomax, in late November 1968 George Harrison and his... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Sex researcher Shere Hite
Saturday, 05 October 2013
This week Channel 4 embarks on a season of programmes about sex. Real sex, it claims, in real British bedrooms. A new series called Masters of Sex dramatises the story of William Masters... Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Do Ho Suh: Walk the House, Tate Modern review - memories are...
A traditional Korean house has appeared at Tate Modern....
Die Walküre, Royal Opera review - total music drama
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Georgia Mancio, Alan Broadbent, Pizza Express Dean Street re...
Does it spark joy? Yes, definitely...and maybe we music critics should ask the Marie Kondo question more often. London-based vocalist/lyricist...
The Extraordinary Miss Flower review - odd mashup of music,...
The makers of The Extraordinary Miss Flower are billing it as a “performance film”, a subspecies of the concert-movie...
Borrowed Time: Lennon's Last Decade review - how the gr...
Purporting to be a documentary about John Lennon in the 1970s, Borrowed Time is no such thing....
Album: PUP - Who Will Look After The Dogs?
PUP’s Who Will Look After The Dogs? is a raw and emotionally charged album that captures the band’s chaotic spirit while showing clear...
My Master Builder, Wyndham's Theatre review - Ewan McGr...
It's both brave and bracing to welcome new voices to the West End, but sometimes one wonders if such exposure necessarily works to the benefit of...
First Person: rising folk star Amelia Coburn on her French i...
“Sandra” is one of my favourite tracks from my album Between The Moon and the Milkman which was released last year. While living in...
Adrian Utley / Eddie Henderson Project, Ronnie Scott's...
On the eve of recording an album at Real World Studios, guitarist Adrian Utley and the American trumpet player Eddie Henderson brought their “...