thu 11/09/2025

book reviews and features

The private life of Stefan Zweig in England

Jasper Rees

On 23 February 1942 at half past four in the afternoon in a secluded Brazilian hilltown called Petrópolis about an hour from Rio, a maid and her husband pushed at the bedroom door of a modest...

Read more...

Sunday Book: Neil Gaiman - Norse Mythology

Boyd Tonkin

Odin the All-Father, “lord of the slain, the gallows god”, has two ravens that “perch on his shoulders and whisper into his ears” as he wanders in disguise around the world. They are Huginn and...

Read more...

Sunday Book: Daniel Levitin - A Field Guide to Lies and Statistics

Peter Forbes

Daniel Levitin makes one reference to Donald Trump in this book (to the latter’s claim to have seen on TV...

Read more...

Dr Michael Scott: How to make the most of globalisation

Michael Scott

The Guardian called Brexit “a rejection of globalisation.” That’s as may be, but the reality is we cannot, however much we might want to, check out of the globalised world in which...

Read more...

Sunday Book: Tessa Hadley - Bad Dreams

Boyd Tonkin

In one of Tessa Hadley’s piercingly smart and subtle tales, a woman whose upwardly-mobile path has taken her from Leeds to Philadelphia works for a firm that manufactures instruments to test the “...

Read more...

Sunday Book: James Lee Burke - The Jealous Kind

Liz Thomson

In the heat of a Texas summer, Aaron Holland Broussard comes of age. It’s 1952:  the two world wars still cast their long shadows and, far away, the Americans are fighting the Russians in a...

Read more...

Sunday Book: Michel Houellebecq - Unreconciled: Poems 1991-2013

Boyd Tonkin

The American poet-critic Randall Jarrell once entitled a collection of essays A Sad Heart at the Supermarket. He might have enjoyed Michel Houellebecq’s poem “Hypermarket - November”. Its...

Read more...

Sunday Book: Nadeem Aslam - The Golden Legend

Matthew Wright

Elegant literary romance and contemporary jihadism are unlikely bedfellows. Yet British-Pakistani novelist Nadeem Aslam has now written a third novel combining the two. While The...

Read more...

Richard Adams: 'If I'd known how well I could write I’d have started earlier'

Jasper Rees

Richard Adams, who has died at the age of 96, was the high priest of anthropomorphism. Much his most famous and loved novel is his first, Watership Down, published when he...

Read more...

Christmas Book: When Broadway Went to Hollywood

David Nice

Tinseltown's relationship to its more sophisticated, older New York brother is analogous to Ethan Mordden's engagement by Oxford University Press. The presentation is a sober, if slim, academic...

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 £49,000 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

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Album: Baxter Dury - Allbarone

Quite why Baxter Dury isn't already a national treasure is a mystery to me. Not for his nepo connections but...

Lammermuir Festival 2025 review - music with soul from the h...

One piece that you’re unlikely to hear at the Lammermuir Festival is Lucia di Lammermoor. As co-director James Waters explained during a...

Album: Yasmine Hamdan - I Remember I Forget بنسى وبتذكر

A lot is going on during Yasmine Hamdan’s third solo album. Despite all ten songs of I Remember I Forget بنسى وبتذكر drawing from the...

BBC Proms: Steinbacher, RPO, Petrenko / Sternath, BBCSO, Ora...

My final visit to the Proms for this year was a Sunday double-...

Honey Don’t! review - film noir in the bright sun

The Coen brothers’ output has been so broad-ranging, and the duo so self-deprecating, that critics have long had difficulty getting their arms...

Blu-ray: The Sweeney - Series One

You’ll have absorbed key strands of The Sweeney‘s DNA even if you’ve never watched an episode, ITV’s groundbreaking police drama having...

theartsdesk on Vinyl 92: Marianne Faithful, Crayola Lectern,...

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Black Lips Season of the Peach (Fire)

...

Blondshell, Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow review - woozy roc...

There is such nonchalance with Sabrina Teitelbaum that even her appeals to the crowd appeared laid-back. At points during her set the Los Angeles...

Ganavya, Barbican review - low-key spirituality

At the start or her show, the white-robed singer Ganavya does something unusual: while other performers usually warm their audience up before...

newsletter

Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday!

Simply enter your email address in the box below

View previous newsletters