wed 19/03/2025

book reviews and features

Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War: A Scenario review - on the inconceivable

Jack Barron

"[A]n unimaginably beautiful day": this was how Kikue Shiota described the morning of the 6th of August, 1945, in Hiroshima. The day was soon to change, unimaginably, as the city was blitzed by...

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Anna Reid: A Nasty Little War - The West's Fight to Reverse the Russian Revolution review - home truths

Hugh Barnes

During the Cold War, US presidents often claimed that the West and the Soviet Union had never fought one another directly. This observation...

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Tom Chatfield: Wise Animals review - on the changing world

Jon Turney

Consider a chimp peeling a stick which it will poke into a termite nest. It strikes us as a human gesture. Our primate cousin is fashioning a tool. Just as important, the peeled stick implies a...

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Sheila Heti: Alphabetical Diaries review - an A-Z of inner life

India Lewis

After a first read of the blurb for Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries, you might be forgiven for assuming that this is merely a gimmick.

The book does what it says on the tin: each...

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David Harsent: Skin review - our strange surfaces

Jack Barron

David Harsent has won a lot of prizes. From the Eric Gregory to the T. S. Eliot, he has carved out a literary career positively glittering...

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Brian Klaas: Fluke review - why things happen, and can we stop them?

Bernard Hughes

One day in the early 90s I accepted the offer of a lift from a friend to a university open day I hadn’t been planning to go to. I ended up attending that university and there met my wife, and if I...

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Richard Schoch: Shakespeare's House review - nothing ill in such a temple

Lia Rockey

Richard Schoch, in the subtitle of his new book on Shakespeare’s House, promises something big: “a window onto his life and legacy.” To the disgruntled reader – pushed to the brink...

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Richard Dorment: Warhol After Warhol review - beyond criticism

Alice Brewer

2023 was a good year for Andy Warhol post-mortems: after Nicole Flattery’s Nothing Special, after...

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Best of 2023: Books

theartsdesk

From wandering Rachmaninoff to Ulysses tribute, or a poet’s boyhood in Dundee to sleeplessness and arboreal inner lives, our reviewers share their literary picks from 2023.

...

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First Person: novelist Pip Adam on the sound of injustice

Pip Adam

I know it rattles me, so I try to prepare for it. But I am never fully prepared for the noise.

The correctional facilities I have visited over the last 30 years are noisy places. A secure...

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