mon 01/09/2025

book reviews and features

Lynne Murphy: The Prodigal Tongue review - two nations divided by a common language?

Liz Thomson

For as long as I can remember, and long before I set foot in America for the first time at age 24, I have...

Read more...

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...

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... ...
BBC Proms: Barruk, Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, Kuusisto rev...

Every year, the Royal Albert Hall proves complicit in the magic of the quietest utterances if, as Barenboim put it, you let the audience come to...

Album: Brad Mehldau - Ride into the Sun

Brad Mehldau’s three trio concerts in the UK in June showed what it is he does so brilliantly. The group (with bassist Felix Moseholm and drummer...

BBC Proms: Alexander’s Feast, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Whela...

Many Londoners would already have experienced the musicality incarnate of Peter Whelan and his Irish Baroque Orchestra. A smaller ensemble rocked...

Music Reissues Weekly: The Outer Limits - Just One More Chan...

The Outer Limits were from Leeds. Active over 1965 to 1968, the...

BBC Proms: Moore, LSO, Bancroft review - the freshness of mo...

11am concerts do take some getting used to. The BBC Proms season has no fewer than...

Willis-Sørensen, Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, Wilson, Cadoga...

This week Vladimir Putin tried to murder my hosts in Ukraine. He failed. In more hopeful days, I spoke at a seminar organised by the British...

Interview, Riverside Studios review - old media vs new in sp...

The cult film that director Theo van Gogh left behind when he was killed in 2004, Interview, has already been remade twice;...

theartsdesk Radio Show 37 - Pete Lawrence of the Big Chill d...

This edition of Peter Culshaw’s peripatetic...

Album: Sabrina Carpenter - Man's Best Friend

Following the success of 2024’s flirtatious Short n’ Sweet, Sabrina Carpenter has fully committed to her pin-up popstar status with ...

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