book reviews and features
Richard J Evans: The Hitler Conspiracies review – Nazi myths debunked
Monday, 12 October 2020
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... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Sally Anne Gross and Dr George Musgrave, authors of 'Can Music Make You Sick?'
Saturday, 10 October 2020
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... Read more... |
Book extract: Snake by Erica Wright
Thursday, 08 October 2020
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,... Read more... |
Hermione Lee: Tom Stoppard, A Life review - the last word on a theatrical wordsmith
Wednesday, 07 October 2020
"The older he got, the less he cared about self-concealment," or so it is said of Sir Tom Stoppard,... Read more... |
William Boyd: Trio review - private perils in 1968
Monday, 05 October 2020
William Boyd’s fiction is populated by all manner of artists. Writers, painters, photographers, musicians and... Read more... |
John Lanchester: Reality, and Other Stories review - campfire spooks for the digital age
Wednesday, 30 September 2020
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... Read more... |
Bob Woodward: Rage review - terror and tyranny in the White House
Tuesday, 29 September 2020
“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... Read more... |
Ottessa Moshfegh: Death in Her Hands review - a case of murder mind
Tuesday, 29 September 2020
Death in Her Hands was a forgotten manuscript, the product of a series of daily automatic writing exercises... Read more... |
Sudhir Hazareesingh: Black Spartacus review – the life, and thought, of the first black super-hero
Monday, 28 September 2020
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... Read more... |
Ian Williams: Reproduction review - a dazzling kaleidoscope of life's tragicomedy
Monday, 28 September 2020
Ian Williams’s writing is always in motion. For his 2012 poetry collection Personals, and since, he has... 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...
Samuel Arbesman: The Magic of Code review - the spark ages
The slightly overwrought subtitle, "How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World and Shapes Our Future", gives a...
Album: Mary Halvorson - About Ghosts
Although Mary Halvorson leads the sextet Amaryllis on About Ghosts, instrumentally, she does not place her guitar to the fore. The first...
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bridge Theatre review - Nick...
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This thrilling production of Saul takes Handel’s dramatisation of the Bible’s first Book of Samuel and paints it in...
theartsdesk at the Dublin International Chamber Music Festiv...
If, like me, chamber music isn’t your most frequent home, there are bound to be revelations of what for many are known masterpieces. Mine in...
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...