sun 20/07/2025

book reviews and features

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages of love and support

Tom Birchenough

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Tom Raworth: Cancer review - truthfulness

Jack Barron

I recently heard a BBC Radio 4 presenter use the troubling phrase: "Not everyone agreed on the reality of that." Once the domain of Andre Breton’s Manifeste du surréalisme, such...

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Ian Leslie: John and Paul - A Love Story in Songs review - help!

John Carvill

Do we need any more Beatles books? The answer is: that’s the wrong question. What we need is more Beatles books that are worth reading. As the musician and music historian Bob Stanley pointed out...

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Samuel Arbesman: The Magic of Code review - the spark ages

Jon Turney

The slightly overwrought subtitle, "How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World and Shapes Our Future", gives a good indication how computer enthusiast Sam Arbesman...

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Zsuzsanna Gahse: Mountainish review - seeking refuge

Leila Greening

Mountainish by Zsuzsanna Gahse is a collection of 515 notes, each contributing to an expansive kaleidoscope of mountain encounters. Translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire in...

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Patrick McGilligan: Woody Allen - A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham review - New York stories

John Carvill

Patrick McGilligan’s biography of Woody Allen weighs in at an eye-popping 800 pages, yet he waits only for...

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Howard Amos: Russia Starts Here review - East meets West, via the Pskov region

India Lewis

Russia Starts Here: Real Lives in the Ruin of Empire, the journalist Howard Amos’ first book, is a prescient and fascinating examination of the borderlands of a bellicose nation. Focusing...

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Henry Gee: The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Why Our Species is on the Edge of Extinction review - survival instincts

Jon Turney

Henry Gee’s previous book, A Brief History of Life on Earth, made an interestingly downbeat read for a title that won the UK’s science book prize. He emphasised that a...

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Jonathan Buckley: One Boat review - a shore thing

Leila Greening

One Boat, Jonathan Buckley’s 13th novel, captures a series of encounters at the water’s edge: characters converge...

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theartsdesk

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

It followed some hectic and intensive months when a disparate and...

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