tue 05/08/2025

book reviews and features

Richard Sennett: Building and Dwelling - Ethics for the City review

mark Kidel

All the great sociologists, in the tradition of Georg Simmel, Max Weber and others, are on a mission. They cannot help wishing to change the world. Science should be value-free, but the social...

Read more...

Agnès Poirier: Left Bank review - Paris in war and peace

Marina Vaizey

There are too many awestruck cultural histories of...

Read more...

Matthew Sweet: Operation Chaos review - paranoia and insanity in the Cold War

Jasper Rees

In 2017 the documentary series The Vietnam War told the story, from soup to nuts, of America’s misadventure in south-east Asia. It now seems the comprehensive...

Read more...

'In order to write my book I had to kill Jane Austen'

Rachel Halliburton

My heroine would not have appeared in a Jane Austen novel. Brilliant, arch and incisive though Austen...

Read more...

Stephen Walsh's Debussy - A Painter in Sound - extract

stephen Walsh

All this time La Mer had been brewing. It was almost a year since Debussy had written to Colonne...

Read more...

Lisa Halliday: Asymmetry review - unconventional and brilliant

Katherine Waters

Lisa Halliday’s striking debut novel consists of three parts. The first follows the blooming relationship between Alice and Ezra (...

Read more...

Rhidian Brook on The Killing of Butterfly Joe

Rhidian Brook

When I was 23 I had a job selling butterflies in glass cases in America. I worked for a guy who, as well as...

Read more...

Ursula K Le Guin - Dreams Must Explain Themselves review - enraging and enlightening

Marina Vaizey

Essay collections are happily mainstream now, from Zadie Smith to Oliver Sacks, with more and more bits and bobs coming from unexpected quarters. These patchwork quilts from remarkable writers can...

Read more...

John Tusa: 'the arts must make a noise' - interview

Liz Thomson

In our era of 24/7 news, downloadable from anywhere in the world at the touch of an app, it's hard to...

Read more...

Mick Herron: London Rules review - hypnotically fascinating, absolutely contemporary

Marina Vaizey

London Rules – explicitly cover your arse – is the fifth in the most remarkable and mesmerising series of ...

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... ...
Blu-ray: Two Way Stretch / Heavens Above

The years between 1955’s The Ladykillers and 1964’s Dr Strangelove were the years of what Sanjeev Bhaskar recently described as...

Make It Happen, Edinburgh International Festival 2025 review...

You could distinctly hear the murmurs of recognition from the Edinburgh audience – responding to knowing mentions of the city’s Leith and...

Folkestone Triennial 2025 - landscape, seascape, art lovers...

A rare cloud form envelopes the headland and to the east and the west Folkestone is cut off from the known world. This mist shortens...

Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews - Rhys Darby / Alex Stringer

Rhys Darby, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★

Rhys Darby, the New Zealand actor and...

Album: Molly Tuttle - So Long Little Miss Sunshine

Molly Tuttle is a star of the US bluegrass scene whose last couple of albums have broadened her appeal. On them she wandered into...

Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews: I'm Ready To Talk Now /...

I’m Ready to Talk Now, Traverse Theatre ...

Music Reissues Weekly: Chip Shop Pop - The Sound of Denmark...

One of the more interesting tracks on Paul Weller’s fascinating new cover versions album Find El Dorado is his interpretation of “When...

theartsdesk at the Three Choirs Festival - Passion in the Ca...

“Powerful, Timeless, Inspiring” it says on the front cover of the programme-book for this year’s supposedly 297th Three Choirs Festival at...

Natalia Ginzburg: The City and the House review - a dying ar...

Many readers and writers think of epistolary novels as old-fashioned, just as letter writing itself can seem a bit quaint nowadays. The genre...

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