book reviews and features
Ruby Tandoh: Cook As You Are review - truly a trailblazer
Monday, 04 October 2021
Ever since her appearance on The Great British Bake Off in 2013, Ruby Tandoh has been a breath of fresh air to the food... Read more... |
10 Questions for writer Lucia Osborne-Crowley
Tuesday, 28 September 2021
Anyone familiar with psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk’s bestseller The Body Keeps the Score (2014) will recognise the ghost of his title in Lucia Osborne-Crowley’s My Body Keeps... Read more... |
Barry Adamson: Up Above the City, Down Beneath the Stars review - the post-punk colossus spills his guts in a raw style
Friday, 24 September 2021
For those not familiar with the murkier corners of British rock music history, Barry Adamson was a significant... Read more... |
Thomas Hardy: Fate, Exclusion and Tragedy, Sky Arts review – too much and not enough
Wednesday, 22 September 2021
Born in 1840, Thomas Hardy lived a life of in-betweens. Modern yet traditional, the son of a builder who went on to become a famous... Read more... |
Colson Whitehead: Harlem Shuffle review - period piece speaks to the present
Tuesday, 21 September 2021
More than once, reading Colson Whitehead’s latest novel Harlem Shuffle, the brilliant Josh and Benny Safdie movie Uncut Gems from 2019 came to mind, which was... Read more... |
Sebastian Faulks: Snow Country review - insects under a stone
Monday, 20 September 2021
Historical fiction – perhaps all fiction – presents its authors with the problem of how to convey contextual information that is external to the plot but necessary to the reader’s understanding of... Read more... |
Claire-Louise Bennett: Checkout 19 review - coming to life
Monday, 06 September 2021
Like any good writer, Claire-Louise Bennett loves lists. Lists are, after all, those moments when words, freed from grammar’s grip, can simply be themselves – do their own thing, show off,... Read more... |
Christopher Clark: Prisoners of Time review - from Kaiser Bill to Dominic Cummings
Friday, 13 August 2021
Historians seldom make the news themselves. However, Christopher Clark – the Australian-born Regius Professor of History at Cambridge University – hogged headlines and filled op-ed pages in... Read more... |
Thora Hjörleifsdóttir: Magma review - love burns in debut novel from Iceland
Tuesday, 03 August 2021
Thora Hjörleifsdóttir’s Magma is certainly not an easy read. It describes, in short chapters... Read more... |
10 Questions for novelist Mieko Kawakami
Tuesday, 27 July 2021
Mieko Kawakami sits firmly amongst the Japanese literati for her sharp and pensive depictions of life in... Read more... |
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2022 Parliamentary Jazz Awards: baubles, bromides and birthd...
The winners of this year's Parliamentary Jazz Awards were...
Album: Neil Young and Crazy Horse - Toast
Neil Young put Toast to one side in 2001, dismayed at its blue emotional terrain. Depicting his marriage to Pegi Young hanging by a...
Love Supreme Festival, Sunday review - eclectic jazz on the...
By day three of any festival things are usually winding down. But there was a sense that...
Album: Vyvyan - Y
After four years, three releases and a slew of remixes, the identity of spotlight-shunning producer Vyvyan ended up the subject of intense...
theartsdesk at the East Neuk Festival 2022 - on Cloud Nine f...
Last year’s relatively slimline East Neuk Festival felt like a feast in time of plague. This July everything was back to full strength in numerous...
Jessie Burton: The House of Fortune review - a muted, sensit...
A sequel is always a hard thing to write, especially if the book that precedes it is a bestseller, adapted for television and read by more than a...
Album: Viagra Boys - Cave World
The third album from Stockholm rowdies Viagra Boys doesn’t muck about with what they do, but it’s more persistently punkin’ than their last. There...
Mick Jagger: My Life as a Rolling Stone review, BBC Two - th...
At the beginning of this film, Mick Jagger says: “What most...
Alcina, Glyndebourne review - Handel on the strand
Reviewing the Grange Festival production of Tamerlano the other day, I noted the difficulty...