mon 11/08/2025

book reviews and features

theartsdesk Q&A: Biographer Claire Tomalin on Charles Dickens

Jasper Rees

The tally of Charles Dickens’s biographers grows ever closer to 100. The English language’s most celebrated novelist repays repeated study, of course, because both his life and his work are so...

Read more...

'Books have been my life': Doris Lessing

Jasper Rees

Doris Lessing’s storm-tossed life would make a stirring biopic. She spent her early years on an isolated farm in the Southern Rhodesian veldt, abandoned the children of her first marriage to take...

Read more...

10 Questions for Count Arthur Strong

Jasper Rees

Autumn is a season of tumbling leaves, dark afternoons and of course fatuous memoirs from people off the telly. But every so often the world is taken by surprise, less by autumn itself than by the...

Read more...

Extract: George Harrison - Behind the Locked Door

graeme Thomson

Following the completion of the White Album, and the conclusion of recording sessions in Los Angeles with new Apple signing Jackie Lomax, in late November 1968 George Harrison and his...

Read more...

theartsdesk Q&A: Sex researcher Shere Hite

Jasper Rees

This week Channel 4 embarks on a season of programmes about sex. Real sex, it claims, in real British bedrooms. A new series called Masters of Sex dramatises the story of William Masters...

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... ...
Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer, Edinburgh Interna...

Fresh from their triumph at the Proms, the Budapest Festival Orchestra arrived at the Edinburgh International Festival with a programme that...

Tom at the Farm, Edinburgh Fringe 2025 review - desire and d...

As shockingly beautiful as it is horrifyingly brutal, actor Armando Babaioff’s deeply Brazilian adaptation of thriller Tom at the Farm...

MARS, Irish National Opera review - silly space oddity with...

The craft heads to Mars, the music remains below on earth. Which is partly intentional: composer Jennifer Walshe tells us she listened to “synth...

Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews - Desiree Burch / Andy Parsons

Desiree Burch, Monkey Barrel ★★★★

Desiree Burch is a bundle of energy as...

Album: Rise Against - Ricochet

Ricochet is Chicago punk veterans Rise Against’s 10th album and,...

Works and Days, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review...

With the sheer density of theatrical creations jostling for attention across...

Eight Postcards from Utopia review - ads from the era when 1...

If you saw it blind, with no information about its origins, Eight Postcards from Utopia might look like 70 minutes of outtakes...

Music Reissues Weekly: The Final Solution - Just Like Gold

The booklet coming with Just Like Gold - Live At The Matrix frequently refers to the band as “The Solution.” It will be...

Every Brilliant Thing, @sohoplace review - return of the com...

The Fringe piece Duncan Macmillan devised with Jonny Donahoe in 2014 has since been round the world and back, finally landing in the...

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