book reviews and features
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Wednesday, 01 October 2025
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com. It followed some hectic and intensive months when a disparate and... Read more... |
Patrick McGilligan: Woody Allen - A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham review - New York stories
Wednesday, 09 April 2025
Patrick McGilligan’s biography of Woody Allen weighs in at an eye-popping 800 pages, yet he waits only for... Read more... |
Howard Amos: Russia Starts Here review - East meets West, via the Pskov region
Tuesday, 01 April 2025
Russia Starts Here: Real Lives in the Ruin of Empire, the journalist Howard Amos’ first book, is a prescient and fascinating examination of the borderlands of a bellicose nation. Focusing... Read more... |
Henry Gee: The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Why Our Species is on the Edge of Extinction review - survival instincts
Saturday, 15 March 2025
Henry Gee’s previous book, A Brief History of Life on Earth, made an interestingly downbeat read for a title that won the UK’s science book prize. He emphasised that a... Read more... |
Jonathan Buckley: One Boat review - a shore thing
Tuesday, 11 March 2025
One Boat, Jonathan Buckley’s 13th novel, captures a series of encounters at the water’s edge: characters converge... Read more... |
Jessica Duchen: Myra Hess - National Treasure review - well-told life of a pioneering musician
Tuesday, 25 February 2025
Myra Hess was one of the most important figures in British cultural life in the mid-20th century: the pre-eminent... Read more... |
Shon Faye: Love in Exile review - the greatest feeling
Tuesday, 18 February 2025
As Valentine’s Day crests around us, and lonely hearts come out of their winter hibernation, what better time to publish writer and journalist Shon Faye’s second book Love in Exile? In... Read more... |
Philip Marsden: Under a Metal Sky review - rock and awe
Tuesday, 11 February 2025
Working on materials was basic to human culture from the start: chipping at flint to make a hand-axe; fashioning bone or wood; drying hides. In time, people discovered that some materials,... Read more... |
Jacqueline Feldman: Precarious Lease review - living on the edge
Saturday, 08 February 2025
Taking on some of the contingent, nebulous quality of its subject, Jacqueline Feldman’s Precarious Lease examines the beginning... Read more... |
Catherine Airey: Confessions review - the crossroads we bear
Tuesday, 28 January 2025
Anglo-Irish author Catherine Airey’s first novel, Confessions, is a puzzle, a game of family secrets... Read more... |
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latest in today
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Flintoff, Disney+ review - tumultuous life and times of the...
Documentaries about sports stars are now a dime a dozen, but you can only be as good as your subject matter. We know Andrew Flintoff (usually...
Personal Values, Hampstead Theatre review - deep grief that...
“They fuck you up your Mum and Dad; they may not mean to, but they do.” These lines from Philip Larkin’s 1975 poem, “This Be the Verse”, sum up...
Album: Jenny Hval - Iris Silver Mist
Had I read the contextual blurb about Jenny Hval's latest album first, I might have assumed it was a perfume company collaboration. The album is...
April review - powerfully acted portrait of a conflicted doc...
It’s easy to see metaphors about the status of modern Georgia, once again threatened by the Russian boot, in its recent artistic output...
theartsdesk Q&A: filmmaker Miguel Gomes on his latest ex...
It doesn't take much to get lost in a film by Miguel Gomes. In fact, it's required. Multiple layers, timelines, and perspectives unfold in his...
Album: Billy Idol - Dream Into It
There’s always been a goofy charm about Billy Idol. As an implausibly chiselled Adonis shining out from the deliberate ugliness of the original...
Greg Davies, Brighton Dome review - chocolate bars and erran...
Greg Davies doesn’t spare himself in his new show, Full Fat Legend, his first tour in seven years after having been busy being...
Bach St John Passion, Academy of Ancient Music, Cummings, Ba...
In a programme note for the St John Passion at the Barbican, the Academy of Ancient Music’s chief executive called their Easter performances of...
Album: Viagra Boys - Viagr Aboys
Sweden’s most gloriously unhinged export is back, and Viagr Aboys might just be Viagra Boys at their most fun, feral and fully realised....