book reviews and features
Bruno Maçães: The Dawn of Eurasia review - middle of nowhere![]()
Part travelogue and part broad analysis of the current and future challenges facing the EU, the premise of Bruno Maçães’s new book The Dawn of Eurasia is to “use travel to provide an... Read more... |
David Lodge: Writer’s Luck - A Memoir 1976-1991 review - literary days, in detail![]()
Metaphor, metonymy, simile and synecdoche, anyone? FR Leavis, Roman Jakobson, Jacques Derrida, Frank Kermode? If any of this, and more, turns you on, this lengthy... Read more... |
Nick Coleman: Voices - How a Great Singer Can Change Your Life, review - earworms explored![]()
Readers familiar with Nick Coleman’s 2012 memoir The Train in the Night will know before embarking on this book that the author suffered the worst possible fate for a music journalist:... Read more... |
Best of 2017: Books![]()
With a clownish bully currently installed in the White House, the 2017 Man Booker Prize aptly went to a... Read more... |
Nicholas Blincoe: Bethlehem - Biography of a Town review - too few wise men but remarkable women![]()
Suitably enough, Nicholas Blincoe begins his personal ... Read more... |
Jenny Uglow: Mr Lear - A Life of Art and Nonsense review - a lonely Victorian life, so richly illustrated![]()
Jenny Uglow’s biography of Edward Lear (1812-1888) is a meander, almost day by day, through the long and... Read more... |
Naum Kleiman: Eisenstein on Paper review - a lavish journey into the unconscious![]()
"From drawing, via the theatre, to the cinema". Naum Kleiman's introductory qualification of Sergey Eisenstein's own self-perceived line in his Film Form is one that he follows in a... Read more... |
Jaron Lanier: Dawn of the New Everything review - pioneer of virtual reality tells his story![]()
Jaron Lanier has quite a story to tell. From a teenage flute-playing goat-herd in New Mexico... Read more... |
Rachel Hewitt: A Revolution of Feeling review - from passions to emotions![]()
Utopias have a way of going up in flames. Rachel Hewitt’s new book, A Revolution of Feeling: The Decade that Forged the Modern Mind, charts the revolutionary fervour and disappointment... Read more... |
Reza Aslan: God - A Human History review - on being 'sapiens', and believing![]()
It is not just the season of holidays and holy days in the monotheistic ... Read more... |
Pages
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
The future of Arts Journalism
You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!
We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £33,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d
And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.
latest in today

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...

It has never been an exact science understanding when something will capture lightning in a bottle and go viral. Even less expected is for an...

The trunk in the title is a luxury item, worth 50 million won – just north of £27,000 – shown sinking in deep water in the opening...

There was a time when the only daytime TV (ex-weekends and ex-Wimbledon fortnight) comprised the annual party conferences and the...

The reporting of Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist who was shot dead in her Moscow apartment building in 2006 – on Vladimir Putin’s birthday, a...

Gary Oldman has always lived life to the fullest, on screen and off. Maybe that's why he is often at his best in his pitch-perfect portraits of...

I’ve got an admission: I never really got Radiohead, in no small part because of Thom Yorke’s singing. I appreciate his technical abilities and...
Who doesn’t love the quirky, passionate and humanitarian genius of Leoš Janáček? All of it, these days. Since Charles...

In Dublin, a city that has changed more than most in the last 30 years, a young woman, with an English accent that is expensive to...

There’s plenty of noise out there about 24-year-old Kentish musician Victoria Walker, AKA PinkPantheress. Since being acclaimed BBC Sound of 2022...