BOOKS reviews of books about culture

Extract: Mariachi, Machetes, Meths - Manu Chao in Mexico

Peter Culshaw Sunday, 12 May 2013

Lake Chapalá begins just south of Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco. In case there’s any doubt we’re in Mexico, a mariachi band are propositioning the families who stroll along the waterfront and...

Clandestino: In Search of Manu Chao

Peter Culshaw Sunday, 05 May 2013

Manu Chao isn’t exactly a household name in the UK. In much of Latin America and Europe, however, he’s an iconic figure who is probably the closest thing to Bob Marley there is, a symbol of hope for...

10 Questions for Alexander McCall Smith

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 23 April 2013

Alexander McCall Smith is Scottish, and writes fiction, but he doesn’t write “Scottish fiction” as most of us understand the term. In his world view there are no used needles and discarded condoms...

10 Questions for Writer David Mitchell

Jasper Rees Wednesday, 10 April 2013

“If you show someone something you’ve written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin and say, ‘When you’re ready.’” The words belong to Jason Taylor, the stammering 13-year-old...

Infinite Jest: Dave Eggers on David Foster Wallace

Dave Eggers Monday, 08 April 2013

A new edition of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, with an introduction by Dave Eggers, forms part of a series of classic reissues from Abacus. The publishing imprint this year reaches its 40th...

Extract: Heads and Straights

Lucy Wadham Sunday, 10 March 2013

The first time I admitted publicly to having been brought up in Chelsea I was 35 and at the launch party for my first novel, which was being held in a Tapas bar in Clapham. At that stage in my...

Lives in Music #1: Rod the Autobiography

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 18 December 2012

What makes a good rock biography? Sex, naturally. Drugs, frequently. Rock’n’roll, obviously. None of the above are in short supply in Rod Stewart’s account of a long life spent howling into...

Extract: In Two Minds - Jonathan Miller

Kate Bassett Saturday, 08 December 2012

When I first mentioned to a colleague that I was embarking on a biography of the doctor/director Jonathan Miller, he instantly yelped, “My God, your work’s cut out! The man must have met half the...

Stone Free: Andrew Loog Oldham

Kieron Tyler Sunday, 25 November 2012

The return of The Rolling Stones to the world stage is headline news, but the man who put them there in the first place has decided to reveal the tricks of being an impresario, the hustler that can...

Extract: Etc Etc Amen

theartsdesk Saturday, 10 November 2012

When Zachary C noticed his audience were no longer beguiled by his best Zachary B smile, he arranged for his chargrilled-sweetcorn teeth to be replaced by a mouthful of ultraviolet-sensitive acrylic...

theartsdesk Q&A: Novelist Hilary Mantel

Jasper Rees Wednesday, 17 October 2012

Hilary Mantel has made literary history. Wolf Hall, an action-packed 650-page brick of a book about the rise and rise of Thomas Cromwell, won the Man Booker Prize in 2009. Its successor, the...

theartsdesk Q&A: Writer Michael Frayn

Jasper Rees Sunday, 23 September 2012

Michael Frayn (b 1933) has been having an annus mirabilis. The play the hapless actors of Noises Off are touring is called Nothing On. In the playwright’s case, almost everything has been on. Frayn’s...

Angela Carter: Inside the Bloody Chamber

Susannah Clapp Friday, 24 August 2012

Eighteen months before her death from lung cancer at the age of 51, Angela Carter talked to Jenni Murray on Woman’s Hour. She had just edited The Virago Book of Fairy Tales (1990), a rich stew of...

Welsh Week: Dinefwr, Adain Avion, Llangollen, BrynFest

Jasper Rees Thursday, 28 June 2012

This Friday afternoon at five o’clock, the National Poet of Wales Gillian Clarke will recite a new poem and initiate a seismic week of Welsh cultural exploration. The inaugural Dinefwr Literary...

Extract: The Stone Roses - War and Peace

theartsdesk Saturday, 02 June 2012

There is film footage of those opening magical, transformative moments: of Brown intoning, “The time, the time is now. Do it now, do it now.” Film, however, could not capture the effect the band’s...

The Glastonbury of the Mind: Hay turns 25

Jasper Rees Thursday, 31 May 2012

Apart from “I did not have sex with that woman” and maybe “It’s the economy, stupid”, Bill Clinton seems never to have said anything quite as memorable. Indeed, of all the phrases with his name...

Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands, British Library

Jasper Rees Monday, 14 May 2012

Wordsworth would not be happy. The bard of Grasmere once wrote a poem deploring the new-fangled habit of tourists wandering about the lakes with a book in hand. “A practice very common,” he...

theartsdesk in Budapest: Hay Goes to Hungary

Dylan Moore Thursday, 10 May 2012

Four weeks ahead of its core event in the Welsh border town of Hay-on-Wye the world’s leading festival of literature, ideas and the arts rolls into Budapest. Celebrating its 25th year and 15th...

theartsdesk at the Laugharne Weekend

Dylan Moore Wednesday, 18 April 2012

The Laugharne Weekend has become a fixture in the crowded calendar of festivals that now punctuates not just high days and holidays but the whole six months that make up British Summer Time. Carving...

The Real Mad Men

Ismene Brown Monday, 26 March 2012

The compulsive TV series about the Sixties advertising industry, Mad Men, opens its fifth season tomorrow night (on Sky Atlantic only, chiz), overflowing to the brim with its usual drinking, smoking...

Charles Dickens, Theatre and Dance Critic-at-Large

Ismene Brown Thursday, 09 February 2012

When a young Charles Dickens visited New York in 1842 with his wife, he strolled down Broadway, happened upon an unusual dance and naturally checked out theatreland. As his bicentenary is celebrated...

The Bicentenary of the Birth of Charles Dickens, Westminster Abbey

Judith Flanders Tuesday, 07 February 2012

Why? The question really needs to be asked. Why all the hoopla, the adaptations, reprints, books, comics, tweets, no doubt Facebook pages too. Did we do this for Thackeray last year? Will we do it...

Extract: The Book of Drugs by Mike Doughty

theartsdesk Saturday, 07 January 2012

I have been an admirer of Mike Doughty as a singer and songwriter since picking up Soul Coughing’s first two CDs at a car boot sale for 50p each. I was drawn by the sinister, Lynchian art work and...

Q&A Special: Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011

Jasper Rees Friday, 16 December 2011

When he was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus, Christopher Hitchens carried on talking. He gave a number of riveting interviews – with Lynn Barber in The Sunday Times, Andrew Anthony in The...

theartsdesk in Kerala: Making Hay in God's Own Country

Dylan Moore Sunday, 04 December 2011

Thiruvananthapuram, capital city of the state of Kerala in the far south-west of India, is as crowded with people as its name is with syllables. By mid-November, most of the monsoon rains have passed...

Interview: Novelist Gillian Slovo

Jasper Rees Monday, 28 November 2011

“To my friend Craig.” As all writers must, Gillian Slovo will put her signature to copies of her 2008 novel, Black Orchids, for queues of readers. No other writer will have performed this promotional...

Halloween Special: Patrick McGrath on Sheridan Le Fanu's horror stories

Patrick McGrath Monday, 31 October 2011

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, son of a Protestant clergyman and grand-nephew of the playwright Sheridan, was born in Dublin in 1814. He spent part of his boyhood in County Limerick, where from local...

Interview: Tintin, The Reluctant Movie Star

Jasper Rees Saturday, 22 October 2011

A reporter can be certain of two things: death, and the ephemerality of journalism. Written yesterday, published today, an article will usually be forgotten by tomorrow. The one exception who proves...

Extract: 'Til Death Us Do Part' - Dickens's first biographer

Claire Tomalin Saturday, 22 October 2011

Over their lifelong friendship Dickens sometimes mocked Forster and quarrelled furiously with him, but he was the only man to whom he confided his most private experiences and feelings, and he never...

theartsdesk Q&A: Biographer Claire Tomalin on Charles Dickens

Jasper Rees Tuesday, 18 October 2011

By next year, the bicentenary of his birth, the tally of Charles Dickens’s biographers will come ever closer to 100. The English language’s most celebrated novelist repays repeated study, of course,...

What I'm Reading: Conductor Andrew Litton

David Nice Thursday, 15 September 2011

Newly knighted with the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit for his services to the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, American conductor and pianist Andrew Litton is a musician who believes in the nurturing...

What I'm Reading: Musician Justin Adams

Hilary Whitney Tuesday, 13 September 2011

Justin Adams is considered to be one of the UK’s most original guitarists and record producers and is an extremely versatile collaborator. He was brought up in the Middle East - his father was a...