book reviews and features
Enter theartsdesk's Young Reviewer of the Year Award
Saturday, 15 July 2017
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... Read more... |
Michael Connelly: The Late Show review - mesmerising and believable characters
Sunday, 09 July 2017
Readers have been committed fans since 1992, when the sometime crime reporter... Read more... |
Danny Goldberg: In Search of the Lost Chord review - 1967 well remembered
Sunday, 09 July 2017
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... Read more... |
Eureka: novelist Anthony Quinn on completing his acclaimed trilogy
Sunday, 02 July 2017
I am intrigued by those writers who plan their novels with the bristling rigour of a military strategist,... Read more... |
Jonathan Miles: St Petersburg review - culture and calamity
Sunday, 02 July 2017
Talk about survival: St Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad, now again St Petersburg, all the same... Read more... |
Chris Patten: First Confession - A Sort of Memoir review - remembrances of government and power
Sunday, 02 July 2017
It’s 25 years since Chris Patten lost his seat as Conservative MP for Bath. The 1992 election was called by... Read more... |
Brenda Maddox: Reading the Rocks review - revelations of geology
Sunday, 25 June 2017
Reading the Rocks has a provocative subtitle, “How Victorian Geologists Discovered the Secret of Life”, indicating the role of... Read more... |
John Man: Amazons review - the real warrior women of the ancient world
Sunday, 25 June 2017
As Wonder Woman hits screens worldwide, the publication of a book that explores the myth and... Read more... |
David Sedaris: Theft By Finding review - comic literary talent of historic value
Sunday, 18 June 2017
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... Read more... |
Andrew O'Hagan: The Secret Life review – troubling tales from the online underground
Sunday, 18 June 2017
Imagine that you come across a story by a journalist who, writing for the Daily Mail or The Sun, steals the identity of a real young man from a poor neighbourhood of south-east... Read more... |
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latest in today
Album: Peter Gabriel - I/O
Some 28 years in gestation, Peter Gabriel’s eighth studio album (minus soundtracks) of wholly original songs – his first...
A Christmas Carol, The Old Vic review - older, wiser, and ye...
Familiarity has bred something quite fantastic with the Old Vic Christmas Carol, which is back for a seventh season and merits ringing...
Boat Story, BBC One review - once upon a time in Yorkshire
It was as long ago as January last year that the prolific Williams brothers,...
Dariescu, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds, Bridgewater Hall, Man...
John Storgårds found himself literally facing both ways for the third item on the BBC Philharmonic’s programme on Saturday: towards the audience,...
Mark Rothko, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris review - a show...
The vast and various spaces of Frank Gehry’s monumental Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris suit the needs of the thrilling Mark Rothko exhibition...
Blu-ray: King and Country
British anti-war films inspired by “the war that” failed “to end all wars” include Oh! What a Lovely War, The Return of the Soldier...
The Witches, National Theatre review - fun and lively but wh...
The National Theatre these days seems to be...
The Dante Project, Royal Ballet review - brave but flawed ta...
Singular in its variousness, this is a three-act ballet that need some unpicking. No wonder those hooked on first acquaintance in 2021, like t...
CMAT, Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow review - an evening of ex...
There was a moment towards the end of this exuberant evening when Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson compared the show to a pantomime. This was an...
MacMillan's Christmas Oratorio, Lois, Williams, RSNO, M...
It is not every day that a new choral work by a living composer can confidently be labelled a masterpiece. Yet this is what we have here. James...