mon 17/03/2025

book reviews and features

Daša Drndić: Belladonna review - a tragicomic journey into Europe's darkness

Boyd Tonkin

Daša Drndić, the Croatian author who died in June aged 71, has posthumously won the second Warwick Prize for Women in Translation for her coruscating novel Belladonna. The award, set up...

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Dramatic Exchanges review - a brilliant slice of theatre history

Marina Vaizey

Dramatic Exchanges is a dazzling array of correspondence, stretching over more than a century, between...

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Michael Connelly: Dark Sacred Night review - a pairing of loner detectives

Marina Vaizey

The master of the Southern California...

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Michael Caine: Blowing the Bloody Doors Off review - an actor's handbook, annotated by experience

Marina Vaizey

What a charmer! An irresistible combination of diffidence and confidence, Michael Caine is so much more than Alfie...

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Julian Baggini: How the World Thinks review - a whirlwind tour of ideas

Marina Vaizey

The intrepid philosopher Julian Baggini has travelled the world, going to academic conferences, interviewing scores of practicing philosophers from academics to gurus, trying to figure out and pin...

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Barbara Kingsolver: Unsheltered review - too many issues

Markie Robson-Scott

“When men fear the loss of what they know, they will follow any tyrant who promises to restore the old order.” Mary Treat, the real-life 19th-century botanist who is one of the characters in...

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Simon Sebag Montefiore: Written in History review - epistolary high points

Marina Vaizey

Humdinger! This is a totally brilliant idea for an amazing anthology, although the subtitle “Letters that Changed...

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Neil MacGregor: Living with the Gods review - focuses of belief

Marina Vaizey

Dip in, dip out, argue, agree and disagree: Living with the Gods is the newest manifestation of a rich multimedia format that keeps on giving, devised by that superb writer and lecturer,...

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Lavinia Greenlaw: In the City of Love’s Sleep review - curated lives

Katherine Waters


Iris is a museum conservator with a pair of pre-adolescent daughters and a failing marriage. Raif...

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Olga Tokarczuk: Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead review - on vengeful nature

Katherine Waters

In a small town on the Polish-Czech border where the mobile signal wanders between countries’ operators and only three inhabitants stick it out through the winter, animals are wreaking a terrible...

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Manchester Collective, RNCM review - exploring new territory

Manchester Collective, now very much a part of the establishment world of new music, are still enlarging their territory. For this set, performed...

Henry Gee: The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Why Ou...

Henry Gee’s previous book, A Brief History of Life on Earth, made an interestingly downbeat read for a title that won the UK...

All Happy Families review - unhappy in their own way

Director Haroula Rose’s gentle, good-hearted new comedy-drama All Happy Families takes its title from the famous first sentence...

Album: The Loft - Everything Changes, Everything Stays The S...

“Sitting on a sofa, cigarettes and beer, ten years disappear…agreeing to agree, just to get along.” By going into the difficulties of...

Black Bag review - lies, spies and unpleasant surprises

Michael Fassbender recently starred in Paramount+’s rather laborious spy drama The Agency, but here he finds himself at the centre of a...

Weather Girl, Soho Theatre review - the apocalypse as surrea...

Can Francesca Moody do it again? Fleabag’s producer has brought Weather Girl to London, after a successful run at...

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