wed 11/06/2025

book reviews and features

Richard J Evans: The Hitler Conspiracies review – Nazi myths debunked

Boyd Tonkin

In the days when crowds still thronged airport bookshops, any work entitled The Hitler Conspiracies would surely leap off the shelves. This one ought to flourish in our more immobile...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Sally Anne Gross and Dr George Musgrave, authors of 'Can Music Make You Sick?'

joe Muggs

Today is World Mental Health Day and of course that means an awful lot of hugs and homilies, thoughts and prayers, deep-breathing exercises and it’s-good-to-talk platitudes from people speaking...

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Book extract: Snake by Erica Wright

theartsdesk

Ophidiophobia is one of our most common fears, from the Greek for serpent ('Ophidia'). Writer and editor Erica Wright grew up in Tennessee with periodic interruptions from rattlesnakes,...

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Hermione Lee: Tom Stoppard, A Life review - the last word on a theatrical wordsmith

Matt Wolf

"The older he got, the less he cared about self-concealment," or so it is said of Sir Tom Stoppard,...

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William Boyd: Trio review - private perils in 1968

Charlie Stone

William Boyd’s fiction is populated by all manner of artists. Writers, painters, photographers, musicians and...

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John Lanchester: Reality, and Other Stories review - campfire spooks for the digital age

Lydia Bunt

What do you do when your phone rings, but you know the person ringing isn’t alive? In many ways, the cleverly named Reality, and Other Stories is a collection of...

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Bob Woodward: Rage review - terror and tyranny in the White House

Liz Thomson

“Build the wall!” exhorted Trump, at rally after rally back in the days when we’d all acknowledged his moral repugnancy but still believed he could never attain the presidency. And Trump has...

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Ottessa Moshfegh: Death in Her Hands review - a case of murder mind

Olivia Fletcher

Death in Her Hands was a forgotten manuscript, the product of a series of daily automatic writing exercises...

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Sudhir Hazareesingh: Black Spartacus review – the life, and thought, of the first black super-hero

Boyd Tonkin

The former slave, and coachman on a sugar plantation, began one of his early public proclamations in a typically defiant vein: “I am Toussaint Louverture, you have perhaps heard my name.” At that...

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Ian Williams: Reproduction review - a dazzling kaleidoscope of life's tragicomedy

Daniel Lewis

Ian Williams’s writing is always in motion. For his 2012 poetry collection Personals, and since, he has...

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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...

Samuel Arbesman: The Magic of Code review - the spark ages

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Although Mary Halvorson leads the sextet Amaryllis on About Ghosts, instrumentally, she does not place her guitar to the fore. The first...

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Album: Marina - Princess of Power

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The Gold, Series 2, BBC One review - back on the trail of th...

The first series of The Gold in 2023 was received rapturously, though apparently it only told one half of the story of the 1983 Brink’s-...

Eva Quartet, St Cyprian's review - polyphonic bliss

Eva Quartet are four outstanding Bulgarian voices of polyphonic purity and depth, drawn from the legendary choir Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares, who...

Album: Mary Chapin Carpenter - Personal History

In those seemingly long-ago times of loneliness and lockdown, artists around the world invited us into their kitchens and living rooms as they...

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