book reviews and features
John Grisham: The Guardians review - nail-bitingly good
Sunday, 24 November 2019
Some two million Americans are currently in prison in America. A disproportionate number are black and nearly 200,... Read more... |
Robert Service: Kremlin Winter review – behind Putin's masks
Sunday, 24 November 2019
When U.S. president George W. Bush looked into the eyes of Vladimir Putin he famously “saw his soul”. In his latest meditation on modern... Read more... |
Ted Gioia: Music: A Subversive History review – an informative, giddying ride
Sunday, 17 November 2019
People who derive comfort from Classic FM’s strapline that European classical music is “The World's Greatest Music" are going to have a major problem with this book. American music historian... Read more... |
Book extract: Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich
Friday, 15 November 2019
Between 1991 to 2012, Belorussian journalist and oral historian Svetlana Alexievich travelled the countries that constituted the former... Read more... |
Book extract: Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich
Wednesday, 13 November 2019
Between 1991 to 2012, Belorussian journalist and oral historian Svetlana Alexievich travelled the countries that constituted the former... Read more... |
Book extract: Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich
Monday, 11 November 2019
Between 1991 to 2012, Belorussian journalist and oral historian Svetlana Alexievich travelled the countries that constituted the former... Read more... |
Caroline Moorehead: A House in the Mountains review – the women's war against Fascism
Sunday, 10 November 2019
In September 1944, a heavily pregnant Resistance activist in the north of German-occupied Italy was arrested on a visit to Milan. Lisetta Giua, a law student and fiancée of the Jewish anti-Fascist... Read more... |
Irenosen Okojie: Nudibranch review - daring and surreal
Sunday, 10 November 2019
Visceral, gaudy, alien, otherworldly to the point of being almost improbably imaginative, the nudibranch serves as an appropriate figure for Nigerian-British writer Irenosen Okojie’s muscularly... Read more... |
Julian Barnes: The Man in the Red Coat review – all that glitters…
Friday, 08 November 2019
“Chauvinism is the worst form of ignorance” is the maxim of Dr Pozzi, the hero of Julian Barnes’s latest book... Read more... |
Michael Connelly: The Night Fire review - unputdownable
Sunday, 03 November 2019
Ballard and Bosch sound like some dystopian upmarket commodity. They are, but deep in with the low life. They are Michael Connolly’s new duo of detectives, one in semi-disgrace, one retired. Throw... Read more... |
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latest in today
Album: Polly Scattergood - In This Moment
A decade ago, Polly Scattergood was Mute Records’ newest, most-likely-to signing and, while she never crossed over like similar unconventional...
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I knew what a Howard Hodgkin painting would look like before I ever saw one because of...
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Lorraine Hansberry’s debut, A Raisin in the Sun, was the first drama written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway, where it opened...
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Can this weekly lineup really now be three months old? As we move towards at least some degree of relaxation on the social restrictions that...
The Opera Story: Episodes review - whimsical takes on lockdo...
The Opera Story is an enterprising set-up based in London and founded with a mission to commission and stage...
Lynn + Lucy review - a bruising tale of female friendship
British director Fyzal Boulifa makes his feature...
Birdsong, The Original Theatre Company online review – a gut...
Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks’ best-selling...
Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, Sky Atlantic review - the go...
American history of the 1930s and ‘40s suddenly seems to be all the rage on TV, cropping up in the reborn Perry Mason, Das Boot...
Storyville: Welcome to Chechnya, BBC Four review - trauma, t...
David France’s revelatory film may have been subtitled “The...