fri 02/05/2025

book reviews and features

Elinor Cleghorn: Unwell Women review – misunderstanding and misdiagnosis

Lydia Bunt

I’m one of the women in the pages of Elinor Cleghorn’s new history of the female body, Unwell Women: A Journey Through Medicine and Myth in a Man-Made World. I’ve dealt with strange...

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Ed Miliband: Go Big - How to Fix Our World review - reasons to hope

Liz Thomson

Almost alone among my friends, I liked and admired Ed Miliband, renewing my on-off relationship with the Labour...

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Nichola Raihani: The Social Instinct review - the habits of co-operation

Jon Turney

An army on the move must be as disturbing as it is, on occasion, inspiring. In E.L. Doctorow’s startlingly good civil war novel The March, General Sherman’s column proceeds inexorably...

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Kylie Whitehead: Absorbed review - boundary-blurry, darkly funny debut

CP Hunter

Absorbed meets Allison at the end of her relationship with Owen. They are at a New Year's Eve party when she realises that their 10-year partnership has wound down. So far, so normal. But...

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Rosie Wilby: The Breakup Monologues review - do breakups make us stronger, better people?

Lydia Bunt

According to Rosie Wilby, “breaking up and staying together are simply two sides of the same coin. They are a flick of a switch apart, separated only by one fleeting moment of madness, or perhaps...

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Natasha Brown: Assembly review - turning personal crisis into perfect criticism

Daniel Lewis

School assembly: one of the many great traditions to be upended by the pandemic. According to this...

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Esther Freud: I Couldn't Love You More review - the alternative history of a pregnancy

Markie Robson-Scott

The glamorous unreliability of Esther Freud’s father, Lucian Freud, is an inescapable force in her...

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Music books to end lockdown: Sam Lee, Hawkwind, Dylan, Richard Thompson, and the Electric Muses

Tim Cumming

It won’t be long now before concert halls and back rooms, arts centres and festival grounds fill with people again, and...

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Sam Riviere: Dead Souls review – whip-smart literary satire with a techno tinge

Boyd Tonkin

In 1992 Martin Amis published a story, “Career Move”, in which the writers of sensational screenplays with titles like Decimator and Offensive from Qasar 13 read their work to...

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Lucy Caldwell: Intimacies review - exploring the empty spaces

Lydia Bunt

In the first short story of Lucy Caldwell’s collection Intimacies, “Like This”, one of the worst possible things that could ever happen to a parent occurs. On the spur of a stressful...

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Die Walküre, Royal Opera review - total music drama

Wagner’s universe, in the second of his Ring operas which brings semi-humans on board to challenge the gods, matches exaltation and misery, terror...

Georgia Mancio, Alan Broadbent, Pizza Express Dean Street re...

Does it spark joy? Yes, definitely...and maybe we music critics should ask the Marie Kondo question more often. London-based vocalist/lyricist...

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The makers of The Extraordinary Miss Flower are billing it as a “performance film”, a subspecies of the concert-movie...

Borrowed Time: Lennon's Last Decade review - how the gr...

Purporting to be a documentary about John Lennon in the 1970s, Borrowed Time is no such thing....

Album: PUP - Who Will Look After The Dogs?

PUP’s Who Will Look After The Dogs? is a raw and emotionally charged album that captures the band’s chaotic spirit while showing clear...

My Master Builder, Wyndham's Theatre review - Ewan McGr...

It's both brave and bracing to welcome new voices to the West End, but sometimes one wonders if such exposure necessarily works to the benefit of...

First Person: rising folk star Amelia Coburn on her French i...

“Sandra” is one of my favourite tracks from my album Between The Moon and the Milkman which was released last year.  While living in...

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On the eve of recording an album at Real World Studios, guitarist Adrian Utley and the American trumpet player Eddie Henderson brought their “...

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