thu 11/09/2025

Arts News

Listed: The Many Faces of Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela had a nose for the dramatic gesture. The evidence is there in his speech at the...

Read more...

Listed: The 10 Most Tasteless Album Covers

OK, R Kelly is gross. We knew that. The number of deeply creepy and abusive acts he's been accused...

Read more...

Listed: Television's long-runners

In the past weeks there has been a frenzy of publicity about the timelessness of a Time Lord....

Read more...

Listed: Who shot/staged/fictionalised JFK?

On 22 November 1963 President John F Kennedy was shot, yoking his name to an ex-marine and sometime...

Read more...

Listed: The Best of Joni Mitchell

Of all the rock pantheon, Joni is the one who has evaded definition and over-determination better...

Read more...

Listed: Nights to remember at the National Theatre

The National Theatre tonight hosts its 50th-birthday gala, 11 days after the English-speaking...

Read more...

Listed: Linda Thompson's Top 10 Traditional Songs

"I’m up to my ass in traditional songs," Linda Thompson says in the extensive Q&A published...

Read more...

Listed: Jane Austen provides

Right at the start of the boom around 20 years ago, a Hollywood mogul is said to have told one of...

Read more...

Listed: The 20 best movie songs

Seeing and hearing A Field in England's Richard Glover sing "Baloo, My Boy" while in bedraggled...

Read more...

Listed: Freudian Analysis

Hysteria is back. Terry Johnson’s comedy was written for the Royal Court in 1993, and for its 20th...

Read more...

Listed: Screen Bastards

John Lennon once said, "You have to be a bastard to make it. That's a fact. And the Beatles were...

Read more...

Listed: Poems inspired by paintings

Poetry has always inspired artists. Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Dante’s Divine Comedy are two of the...

Read more...

Listed: Sitcoms that became movies

This week sees the release of the eagerly anticipated Alan Partridge film, Alpha Papa. And while...

Read more...

Listed: Female buddy crimebusters

There's good cops and bad cops, hard cops and soft cops, old cops and young cops, funny cops and...

Read more...

Listed: International pop-disco hits

As someone detached from pop music (more a world, classical, jazz kind of guy) I conducted an...

Read more...

Listed: Pop tributes to pop icons

Leonard Cohen sang, somewhat indiscreetly, about Janis Joplin “giving head” on his unmade bed, Bob...

Read more...

Listed: Whistleblowers

Even now, as Edward Snowden floats in the diplomatic neverwhere of Sheremetyevo airport, someone...

Read more...

Listed: Actors playing themselves

Imagine a scenario in which Daniel Day Lewis is cast as himself. To get into character, he adopts...

Read more...

The best and worst national anthems? Time to award the medals

The onerous task of recording all 205 national anthems for playing at the Olympics medal ceremonies...

Read more...

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

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Cow | Deer, Royal Court review – paradox-rich account of non...

I love irony. Especially beautiful irony. So I’m very excited about the ironic gesture of staging a show with no words at the...

Album: Baxter Dury - Allbarone

Quite why Baxter Dury isn't already a national treasure is a mystery to me. Not for his nepo connections but...

Lammermuir Festival 2025 review - music with soul from the h...

One piece that you’re unlikely to hear at the Lammermuir Festival is Lucia di Lammermoor. As co-director James Waters explained during a...

Album: Yasmine Hamdan - I Remember I Forget بنسى وبتذكر

A lot is going on during Yasmine Hamdan’s third solo album. Despite all ten songs of I Remember I Forget بنسى وبتذكر drawing from the...

BBC Proms: Steinbacher, RPO, Petrenko / Sternath, BBCSO, Ora...

My final visit to the Proms for this year was a Sunday double-...

Honey Don’t! review - film noir in the bright sun

The Coen brothers’ output has been so broad-ranging, and the duo so self-deprecating, that critics have long had difficulty getting their arms...

Blu-ray: The Sweeney - Series One

You’ll have absorbed key strands of The Sweeney‘s DNA even if you’ve never watched an episode, ITV’s groundbreaking police drama having...

theartsdesk on Vinyl 92: Marianne Faithful, Crayola Lectern,...

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Black Lips Season of the Peach (Fire)

...

Blondshell, Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow review - woozy roc...

There is such nonchalance with Sabrina Teitelbaum that even her appeals to the crowd appeared laid-back. At points during her set the Los Angeles...