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We are bowled over! We knew that theartsdesk.com had plenty of supporters out there – we’ve always had a loyal readership of arts…
It was a year for outstanding individual performances, especially from relative newcomers, and at least three flawless ensembles, less so…
Analysts tell us that the UK’s top-rated TV show this Christmas was the King’s speech, with the Strictly Christmas special coming in a mere…
A foreign-language release steeped in Catholicism isn’t exactly what you’d expect to top virtually every end-of-year album list. But…
Turner and Constable, Rivals and Originals, Tate Britain, November 2025Whoever thought of creating an exhibition comparing the brilliance…
The stylish gentlemen pictured above are Crimson Earth, a band active from 1970 to 1976. Regardless of their longevity, the Dorset-based…
If it's possible for snippets from live theatre to play in the mind on a perpetual loop, the London theatre during 2025 offered many such…
It’s 1952 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, seven years after the Enola Gay dropped a bomb on the Japanese empire, but one skinny New Yorker…
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My album of the year came as a real surprise to me, Arvo Pärt’s output…
What is a documentary maker supposed to do when someone as gifted and empathic as Francis Whately has already covered most of the Bowie…
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Analysts tell us that the UK’s top-rated TV show this Christmas was the King’s speech, with the Strictly Christmas special coming in a mere…
Image
My album of the year came as a real surprise to me, Arvo Pärt’s output…
Is there a neuroscientist in the house? I need a latterday Oliver Sacks to tell me about earworms, specifically earworms issuing from the…
Hamad Butt studied at Goldsmiths College at the same time as YBAs (Young British Artists) like Damien Hirst and Gillian Wearing; but…
We can’t do without Così fan tutte; it’s an irresistible masterpiece. But it’s a thorn in the flesh of modern directors, who struggle to…
“Welcome to motherhood, bitch!” By the time a character delivers this reality check, there have been plenty of laughs, and some much more…
While Christmas is the season when traditional theatres trot out the tired clichés of panto, the ever-innovative National Theatre Wales…
There’s a specific vocabulary that attends the arrival of a new Nick Cave album in the 21st century. Words like redemptive, cathartic…
These annual treks to Leeds Town Hall on muggy June evenings have become a bit of a tradition. Going to see Opera North’s Ring feels…
Apart from Simon Reynolds paying tribute in Rip It Up And Start Again, his definitive history of post-punk – notably to the demented…