book reviews and features
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Wednesday, 01 October 2025
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... Read more... |
Zsuzsanna Gahse: Mountainish review - seeking refuge
Tuesday, 29 April 2025
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... Read more... |
Patrick McGilligan: Woody Allen - A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham review - New York stories
Wednesday, 09 April 2025
Patrick McGilligan’s biography of Woody Allen weighs in at an eye-popping 800 pages, yet he waits only for... Read more... |
Howard Amos: Russia Starts Here review - East meets West, via the Pskov region
Tuesday, 01 April 2025
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... Read more... |
Henry Gee: The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Why Our Species is on the Edge of Extinction review - survival instincts
Saturday, 15 March 2025
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... Read more... |
Jonathan Buckley: One Boat review - a shore thing
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
One Boat, Jonathan Buckley’s 13th novel, captures a series of encounters at the water’s edge: characters converge... Read more... |
Jessica Duchen: Myra Hess - National Treasure review - well-told life of a pioneering musician
Tuesday, 25 February 2025
Myra Hess was one of the most important figures in British cultural life in the mid-20th century: the pre-eminent... Read more... |
Shon Faye: Love in Exile review - the greatest feeling
Tuesday, 18 February 2025
As Valentine’s Day crests around us, and lonely hearts come out of their winter hibernation, what better time to publish writer and journalist Shon Faye’s second book Love in Exile? In... Read more... |
Philip Marsden: Under a Metal Sky review - rock and awe
Tuesday, 11 February 2025
Working on materials was basic to human culture from the start: chipping at flint to make a hand-axe; fashioning bone or wood; drying hides. In time, people discovered that some materials,... Read more... |
Jacqueline Feldman: Precarious Lease review - living on the edge
Saturday, 08 February 2025
Taking on some of the contingent, nebulous quality of its subject, Jacqueline Feldman’s Precarious Lease examines the beginning... Read more... |
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latest in today
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Magic Farm review - numpties from the Nineties
There’s nothing more healthy than dissing your own dad, and filmmaker Amalia Ulman says that her old man was “a Gen X deadbeat edgelord skater”...
The Great Escape Festival 2025, Brighton review - a dip into...
As every social space in Brighton once again transforms into a mire of self-important music biz sorts loudly bellowing about “waterfalling on...
theartsdesk Q&A: Zoë Telford on playing a stressed-out p...
If you compiled a list of favourite TV series from the last couple of decades, you’d find that Zoë Telford has appeared in most of them. The...
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...