book reviews and features
Bruno Maçães: The Dawn of Eurasia review - middle of nowhere
Sunday, 21 January 2018
Part travelogue and part broad analysis of the current and future challenges facing the EU, the premise of Bruno Maçães’s new book The Dawn of Eurasia is to “use travel to provide an... Read more... |
David Lodge: Writer’s Luck - A Memoir 1976-1991 review - literary days, in detail
Sunday, 14 January 2018
Metaphor, metonymy, simile and synecdoche, anyone? FR Leavis, Roman Jakobson, Jacques Derrida, Frank Kermode? If any of this, and more, turns you on, this lengthy... Read more... |
Nick Coleman: Voices - How a Great Singer Can Change Your Life, review - earworms explored
Sunday, 14 January 2018
Readers familiar with Nick Coleman’s 2012 memoir The Train in the Night will know before embarking on this book that the author suffered the worst possible fate for a music journalist:... Read more... |
Best of 2017: Books
Sunday, 31 December 2017
With a clownish bully currently installed in the White House, the 2017 Man Booker Prize aptly went to a... Read more... |
Nicholas Blincoe: Bethlehem - Biography of a Town review - too few wise men but remarkable women
Saturday, 23 December 2017
Suitably enough, Nicholas Blincoe begins his personal ... Read more... |
Jenny Uglow: Mr Lear - A Life of Art and Nonsense review - a lonely Victorian life, so richly illustrated
Sunday, 17 December 2017
Jenny Uglow’s biography of Edward Lear (1812-1888) is a meander, almost day by day, through the long and... Read more... |
Naum Kleiman: Eisenstein on Paper review - a lavish journey into the unconscious
Sunday, 17 December 2017
"From drawing, via the theatre, to the cinema". Naum Kleiman's introductory qualification of Sergey Eisenstein's own self-perceived line in his Film Form is one that he follows in a... Read more... |
Jaron Lanier: Dawn of the New Everything review - pioneer of virtual reality tells his story
Sunday, 17 December 2017
Jaron Lanier has quite a story to tell. From a teenage flute-playing goat-herd in New Mexico... Read more... |
Rachel Hewitt: A Revolution of Feeling review - from passions to emotions
Sunday, 10 December 2017
Utopias have a way of going up in flames. Rachel Hewitt’s new book, A Revolution of Feeling: The Decade that Forged the Modern Mind, charts the revolutionary fervour and disappointment... Read more... |
Reza Aslan: God - A Human History review - on being 'sapiens', and believing
Sunday, 03 December 2017
It is not just the season of holidays and holy days in the monotheistic ... Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
The Gold, Series 2, BBC One review - back on the trail of th...
The first series of The Gold in 2023 was received rapturously, though apparently it only told one half of the story of the 1983 Brink’s-...
Eva Quartet, St Cyprian's review - polyphonic bliss
Eva Quartet are four outstanding Bulgarian voices of polyphonic purity and depth, drawn from the legendary choir Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares, who...
Album: Mary Chapin Carpenter - Personal History
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Miss Myrtle’s Garden, Bush Theatre review - flowering talent...
The Bush Theatre is becoming a garden...
Così fan tutte, Nevill Holt Festival/Opera North review - re...
Marianne Moore once famously defined poems as “imaginary gardens with real toads in them”. Operas also fill, or anyway should fill, their...
Music Reissues Weekly: Gather In The Mushrooms
“Forest and the Shore” by Keith Christmas is remarkable. In his essay for Gather In The Mushrooms, compiler, author and Saint Etienne...
Big Star: The Nick Skelton Story review - the ways of a man...
If you’re horse mad or merely an every-four-years Olympic fan, you already know Nick Skelton’s story. Equestrianism can favour mature competitors...
Müller-Schott, RSNO, Søndergård, Usher Hall, Edinburgh - spe...
There was a neat conjunction of commemorations to this concert, the most obvious one being the fact that that 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of...