thu 28/08/2025

book reviews and features

Sarah Hall: Madame Zero review – eerie tales of calamity and change

Boyd Tonkin

Five thousand miles away from her native Lake District, I first understood the eerie magnetism of Sarah Hall’s fiction. As a regional judge for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, I’d travelled to...

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Enter theartsdesk's Young Reviewer of the Year Award

theartsdesk

The Hospital Club’s annual h.Club100 awards celebrate the most influential and innovative people working in the UK’s creative industries, with nominations from the worlds of film and fashion, art...

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Michael Connelly: The Late Show review - mesmerising and believable characters

Marina Vaizey

Readers have been committed fans since 1992, when the sometime crime reporter...

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Danny Goldberg: In Search of the Lost Chord review - 1967 well remembered

Liz Thomson

I was 10 in 1967 though I remember much about the year, indeed about the era, not least the release of Sgt Pepper and the first live global satellite broadcast, when the...

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Eureka: novelist Anthony Quinn on completing his acclaimed trilogy

Anthony Quinn

I am intrigued by those writers who plan their novels with the bristling rigour of a military strategist,...

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Jonathan Miles: St Petersburg review - culture and calamity

Marina Vaizey

Talk about survival: St Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad, now again St Petersburg, all the same...

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Chris Patten: First Confession - A Sort of Memoir review - remembrances of government and power

Liz Thomson

It’s 25 years since Chris Patten lost his seat as Conservative MP for Bath. The 1992 election was called by...

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Brenda Maddox: Reading the Rocks review - revelations of geology

Marina Vaizey

Reading the Rocks has a provocative subtitle, “How Victorian Geologists Discovered the Secret of Life”, indicating the role of...

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John Man: Amazons review - the real warrior women of the ancient world

mark Kidel

As Wonder Woman hits screens worldwide, the publication of a book that explores the myth and...

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David Sedaris: Theft By Finding review - comic literary talent of historic value

Matthew Wright

In a voice of distinctive, high-pitched nasal whimsy, comic essayist and memoirist David Sedaris finds humour with the precision of a mosquito after blood. British...

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