wed 02/07/2025

book reviews and features

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...

Sunday Book: Treasure Palaces - Great Writers Visit Great Museums

Florence Hallett

The modern experience of visiting museums is so far from the hushed contemplation envisaged by our Victorian forebears that the very idea is sufficient to induce a rosy glow of nostalgia, as...

Read more...

Sunday Book: Ruth Franklin - Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life

Markie Robson-Scott

When asked about her most famous short story, "The Lottery", Shirley Jackson said, “I hate it. I’ve lived with that thing 15 years. Nobody will ever let me forget it.” Sixty-eight years later, it’...

Read more...

Shirley Jackson: A Rising Star at 100

Laurence Jackso

My mother has been rediscovered, if she ever went away. She is suddenly a rising star, 51 years after her early death. Interest in Shirley Jackson’s novels and stories has blossomed significantly...

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... ...
Jurassic World Rebirth review - prehistoric franchise gets a...

The first Jurassic Park movie now seems virtually Jurassic itself, having been released in the sepia-tinged year of 1993. Directed with...

Album: Mocky - Music Will Explain (Choir Music Vol. 1)

Dominic “Mocky” Salole has had a long career in which the tension between authenticity and pastiche has been a constant. Toronto-born, of English...

Semele, Royal Opera review - unholy smoke

Poor, slightly silly Semele fries at the sight of lover Jupiter casting off his mortal form, but in Congreve’s and Handel’s supposedly happy...

Sudan, Remember Us review - the revolution will be memorised

In 2019, French-Tunisian journalist and documentary filmmaker Hind Meddeb flew to Sudan after the overthrow of hated dictator Omar al-Bashir,...

Le nozze di Figaro, Glyndebourne review - perceptive humanit...

Over 100 years ago, John Christie envisaged Wagner’s Parsifal with limited forces in the Organ Room at Glyndebourne. He would have been...

Quadrophenia, Sadler's Wells review - missed opportunit...

The red, white and blue bull’s-eye on the front curtain at Sadler’s Wells tells us we are in the familiar territory of Pete Townshend’s...

Fidelio, Garsington Opera review - a battle of sunshine and...

Sometimes, as the first act of Beethoven’s Fidelio closes, the chorus of prisoners discreetly fade away backstage as their brief taste of...

Summer Laugh review - five comics gear up for the Fringe

Appearing at the Edinburgh Fringe has long been an expensive gig for comics. But while stand-ups may need only a microphone to ply...

Album: Brìghde Chaimbeul - Sunwise

The first five-and-a-half minutes of Sunwise’s opening track “Dùsgadh / Waking" are taken up by a drone. Played on the Scottish small...

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