book reviews and features

Roger Scruton: Music as an Art review - how to listen?

Marina Vaizey Sunday, 19 August 2018

Hegel, Kant, David Hume, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Leibniz are all adduced, referred to, and paraphrased, and that’s just for starters. Add Rameau, Schubert, Beethoven, Benjamin Britten and the...

Annie Ernaux: The Years, review - time’s flow

Katherine Waters Sunday, 05 August 2018

“When you were our age, how did you imagine your life? What did you hope for?” It is a video of a classroom south-east of the Périphérique separating Paris from the working-class suburbs. The...

Rachel Heng: Suicide Club review - skin-deep dystopia

Katherine Waters Sunday, 29 July 2018

When Lea is nervous she picks at the skin near the nail of her thumb. When she draws blood the wound repairs instantly because she is a member of the Second Wave endowed with SmartBlood™ and...

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

Boyd Tonkin Sunday, 22 July 2018

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...

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

Boyd Tonkin Sunday, 15 July 2018

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...

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

Boyd Tonkin Sunday, 08 July 2018

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...

Listed: 10 classic tales of the city

Boyd Tonkin Sunday, 01 July 2018

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...

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

Boyd Tonkin Sunday, 24 June 2018

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...

Sarah Langford: In Your Defence review - messy lives

Katherine Waters Sunday, 24 June 2018

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,...

Enter theartsdesk / h Club Young Influencer of the Year award

theartsdesk Tuesday, 19 June 2018

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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