sun 05/10/2025

book reviews and features

Stella Tillyard: The Great Level review – reason and passion in the Fens and Virginia

Boyd Tonkin

The Fens of East Anglia, and the lonely coasts that skirt them, usually sit well below the horizon of mainstream culture. Yet when England’s flatlands and their maritime margins do find a literary...

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Guy Stagg, The Crossway review – a gripping pilgrimage through faith and doubt

Boyd Tonkin

On new year’s day in 2013, Guy Stagg set out to walk alone from Canterbury to Jerusalem. He planned this journey, which would take ten months, cross 11 countries and cover 5500km, in the wake of...

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Georges Simenon: The Krull House review – timely revival for a noir masterwork

Boyd Tonkin

Georges Simenon began to write his Inspector Maigret mysteries in the early 1930s. Not long after after, the famously productive Belgian-born novelist – who could polish off a Maigret inside a...

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Listed: 10 classic tales of the city

Boyd Tonkin

Now is the time of year when weary travellers find themselves in some sun-strafed piazza, gazing in bemusement at a world-renowned monument and wondering why on earth they came. Hectored by...

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Katharine Kilalea: OK, Mr Field review - architecture and alienation on the Cape Town coast

Boyd Tonkin

Modern novels with an architectural theme have, to say the least, a mixed pedigree. At their finest, as in Thomas Bernhard’s Correction, the fluidity and ambiguity of prose fiction...

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Sarah Langford: In Your Defence review - messy lives

Katherine Waters

When Sarah Langford goes to work, she puts on warpaint and wig and acts. But she is not an actor. She defends those who might or might not be guilty of the crimes with with they’ve been charged,...

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Enter theartsdesk / h Club Young Influencer of the Year award

theartsdesk

Are you a young blogger, vlogger or writer in the field of the arts, books and culture? If so, we've a competition for you to enter.

The Hospital Club’s annual h Club100...

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Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott: Swan Song review - Capote redux

Marina Vaizey

Here you will find Babe Paley, Slim Keith, CZ Guest, Gloria Guinness, Lee Radziwill, Marella Agnelli, the stylish leaders of society, gorgeous, gilded, well-married ladies: the men they were with...

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Robert Gordon: Memphis Rent Party review - a fast-moving Mississippi anthology

Sebastian Scotney

“There’s a rhythm in the air around Memphis, there always has been,” Carl Perkins once said. "I don't know what it is, but it's magic." The city on the Mississippi lives up to its...

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Meg Wolitzer: The Female Persuasion review - the many faces of feminism

Markie Robson-Scott

Meg Wolitzer’s 10th novel has been hailed as a breakthrough, a feminist blockbuster, an embodiment of the zeitgeist. (Nicole Kidman has bought the film rights, which goes to show.) But...

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