sat 17/05/2025

book reviews and features

Charlie Porter: Bring No Clothes - Bloomsbury and the Philosophy of Fashion review - dress to impress

India Lewis

It’s not hard to miss the fact that Bloomsbury is back in fashion at the moment. This summer, it felt like everyone’s Instagram story showed a...

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Adam Sisman: The Secret Life of John le Carré review - tinker, tailor, soldier, cheat

Bernard Hughes

This book is quite a sad read. I had been looking forward to it, as a posthumous supplement to Adam Sisman’s 2015 biography of John le Carré/David Cornwell, which, at the time, quite clearly drew...

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Caspar Henderson: A Book of Noises - Notes on the Auraculous review - a call to ears

Jon Turney

Have you ever considered the sheer range of sounds? You may think of deliberate human efforts to move the air: music and song, poetry or...

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'The people behind the postcards': an interview with Priya Hein, author of 'Riambel'

Hannah Hutching

Priya Hein’s debut novel, Riambel, is an excoriating examination of Mauritius’ socio-political structures and the colonial past from which they have sprung. Centred around Noemi, a young...

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Michael Peppiatt: Giacometti in Paris review - approaching the impossible

Jack Barron

We begin with a dead-end. In 1966, Michael Peppiatt – at the time “an obscure young man” – travelled to Paris to...

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Annie Ernaux: Shame review - the translation of pain

India Lewis

The latest translation of Annie Ernaux’s Shame – a text most closely akin to a long-form essay – is an...

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Warhol, Velázquez, and leaving things out: an interview with Lynne Tillman

Alice Brewer

Motion Sickness (1991) is the second novel published by the writer, art collector and cultural critic Lynne Tillman. It is difficult,...

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Celia Dale: Sheep's Clothing review - unsettling, mundane, and right on-trend

CP Hunter

Celia Dale published 13 novels between 1944 and her death in 2011. A majority of her these are often categorised – albeit loosely – as...

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Lutz Seiler: Pitch & Glint review - real verse power

Jack Barron

Reading the torrent of press-releases and blurbs on the many – and ever-growing – contemporary poetry collections over time, one starts to notice a distinct recurrence of certain buzzwords: ...

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Zadie Smith: The Fraud review - the trials we inherit

India Lewis

Zadie Smith’s latest novel, The Fraud, is her first venture into historical fiction – a fiction based...

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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

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Magic Farm review - numpties from the Nineties

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The Great Escape Festival 2025, Brighton review - a dip into...

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Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Wigmore Hall review - too big a splash...

It was a daring idea to mark Ravel’s 150th birthday year with a single concert packing in all his works for solo piano. Jean-Efflam Bavouzet knows...

Good One review - a life lesson in the wild with her dad and...

Good One is a generation-and-gender gap drama that mostly unfolds during a weekend hiking and camping trip in the Catskills Forest...

E.1027 - Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea review - dull...

It’s hard to say who is going to enjoy E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea. Admirers of the modernist designer-architect will...

Album: Rico Nasty - LETHAL

Rico Nasty’s new album LETHAL signals a shift in direction, but whether it is a bold evolution or a step towards something less distinct...

The Marching Band review - what's the French for '...

In Emmanuel Courcol’s drama The Marching Band (En Fanfare in French, and also released as My Brother's Band), a...

Lucy Farrell, Catherine MacLellan, The Green Note review - s...

Lucy Farrell, one quarter of the brilliant, award-winning Anglo-Scots band Furrow Collective, and a solo artist whose stunning debut album, We...

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