Books features
Sunday Book: Haruki Murakami - Absolutely on MusicSunday, 30 October 2016
Every fan of his fiction knows that Haruki Murakami loves jazz and lets the music play throughout his books. Yet in this 320-page dialogue between the novelist and his equally eminent compatriot, conductor Seiji Ozawa, it’s the veteran maestro of... Read more... |
Sunday Book: Alan Bennett - Keeping On Keeping OnSunday, 23 October 2016
To settle down on a darkening evening with a new volume of Alan Bennett is to be in the company of an old friend. Someone you don’t see as often as you’d like but with whom you immediately pick up where you left off. Midnight will come and go and... Read more... |
Sunday Book: I Am Brian WilsonSunday, 16 October 2016
For decades Brian Wilson was depicted as the mad, lost genius of the Beach Boys, but these days, at 74, he's looking more like one of pop's great survivors. After all, he has comprehensively outlived his brothers Dennis and Carl, and has restored... Read more... |
Sunday Book: Carlo Rovelli - Reality Is Not What It SeemsSunday, 16 October 2016
Scientists today tend to patronise the early Greek philosophers who, 2500 years ago, inaugurated enquiry into the nature of things. The Atomic Theory? A lucky guess, they allege. But Carlo Rovelli accords them, and especially Democritus, the key... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Garrison KeillorMonday, 27 June 2016
It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, and has been for the past 42 years, ever since Garrison Keillor first reported on the town's goings-on in his weekly radio show A Prairie Home Companion. Keillor's purring baritone is the gentle voice of non-... Read more... |
Who was St Clair Bayfield?Thursday, 05 May 2016
This week Stephen Frears's film about Florence Foster Jenkins opens. It will bring to the widest attention yet the story of a New York socialite who couldn’t sing and yet did sing, infamously, to a packed Carnegie Hall at the age of 76 in 1944.... Read more... |
When Bowie Came to BeckenhamSaturday, 16 January 2016
This extract from Mary Finnigan’s book Psychedelic Suburbia describes events leading up to the creation of the Beckenham Arts Lab, during the early period after David moved into her flat in Foxgrove Road, Beckenham in April 1969. The book was... Read more... |
Søren Dahlgaard’s Dough PortraitsSunday, 03 January 2016
Can a portrait really be a portrait if we can’t see a person’s face? And what if the reason we can’t see their face is that it is covered with a lump of dough? Is it a joke? And if it is a joke, is it on us or them? Or perhaps it is a joke about art... Read more... |
Extract: The Time Traveller’s Guide to British TheatreThursday, 23 July 2015
Theatre is one of the glories of British culture, a melting pot of creativity and innovation. Beginning with the coronation of Elizabeth I and ending with the televised crowning of the current Queen Elizabeth, our The Time Traveller’s Guide to... Read more... |
Listed: Precocious WritersSaturday, 18 July 2015
Once upon a time... Storytelling is an integral part of all human cultures, and a central pillar of an enlightened education. Some children get the hang of it quickly – they are, as the phrase has it, natural storytellers. This week the Royal Court... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Günter GrassTuesday, 14 April 2015
The Nobel prize-winning writer, playwright and artist Günter Grass was arguably the best-known German-language author of the second half of the 20th century. Kate Connolly met him in May 2010 in Istanbul where, after attending a series of literary... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Port Eliot FestivalMonday, 28 July 2014
Remember when festivals were only about what they were ostensibly about? When, say, Reading offered nothing beyond hard rock bar disgusting toilets, overpriced hamburgers and the prospect of a punch-up. When literary festivals dealt only in, well,... Read more... |
