book reviews and features
Sunday Book: Zadie Smith - Swing Time
Sunday, 13 November 2016
In his lovely memoir My Father’s Fortune, Michael Frayn dubs the Holloway and Caledonian Roads the “Tigris and Euphrates” of his family history. In that case, just a few pages west... Read more... |
Sunday Book: Elena Ferrante - Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey
Sunday, 06 November 2016
The 2003 first, Italian edition of La Frantumaglia begins with words from Elena Ferrante’s publisher, Edizioni E/O, about why the book of collected writings was published: “To satisfy the... Read more... |
Sunday Book: Haruki Murakami - Absolutely on Music
Sunday, 30 October 2016
Every fan of his fiction knows that Haruki Murakami loves jazz and lets the music play throughout his books. Yet in this 320-page dialogue between the novelist and his equally eminent compatriot,... Read more... |
Sunday Book: Alan Bennett - Keeping On Keeping On
Sunday, 23 October 2016
To settle down on a darkening evening with a new volume of Alan Bennett is to be in the company of an old friend. Someone you don’t see as often as you’d like but with whom you immediately pick up... Read more... |
Harriet Walter on Brutus and Other Heroines
Sunday, 23 October 2016
A part we have played is like a person we once met, grew to know, became intimately enmeshed with and finally moved away from. Some of these characters remain friends, others are like ex-lovers... Read more... |
Sunday Book: I Am Brian Wilson
Sunday, 16 October 2016
For decades Brian Wilson was depicted as the mad, lost genius of the Beach Boys, but these days, at 74, he's looking more like one of pop's great survivors. After all, he has comprehensively... Read more... |
Sunday Book: Carlo Rovelli - Reality Is Not What It Seems
Sunday, 16 October 2016
Scientists today tend to patronise the early Greek philosophers who, 2500 years ago, inaugurated enquiry into the nature of things. The Atomic Theory? A lucky guess, they allege. But Carlo Rovelli... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Garrison Keillor
Monday, 27 June 2016
It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, and has been for the past 42 years, ever since Garrison Keillor first reported on the town's goings-on in his weekly radio show A Prairie Home Companion... Read more... |
Who was St Clair Bayfield?
Thursday, 05 May 2016
This week Stephen Frears's film about Florence Foster Jenkins opens. It will bring to the widest attention yet the story of a New York socialite who couldn’t sing and yet did sing, infamously, to... Read more... |
Søren Dahlgaard’s Dough Portraits
Sunday, 03 January 2016
Can a portrait really be a portrait if we can’t see a person’s face? And what if the reason we can’t see their face is that it is covered with a lump of dough? Is it a joke? And if it is a joke,... 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...
Philharmonia, Alsop, RFH / Levit, Abramović, QEH review - mi...
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The Accountant 2 review - belated return of Ben Affleck...
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The Inseparables, Finborough Theatre review - uneven portrai...
The Finborough has once again performed the miracle of creating a whole world in its intimate space: this time, inter-war France, where...
The Ugly Stepsister review - gleeful Grimm revamp
Although both of the Brothers Grimm died around 1860, they still insist on getting dozens of film and TV credits in each decade of our...
Album: Self Esteem - A Complicated Woman
Given that Prioritise Pleasure was Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s (RLT) Back to Black, and that there’s been a lengthy...
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...