sun 29/06/2025

book reviews and features

Music books to end lockdown: Sam Lee, Hawkwind, Dylan, Richard Thompson, and the Electric Muses

Tim Cumming

It won’t be long now before concert halls and back rooms, arts centres and festival grounds fill with people again, and...

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Sam Riviere: Dead Souls review – whip-smart literary satire with a techno tinge

Boyd Tonkin

In 1992 Martin Amis published a story, “Career Move”, in which the writers of sensational screenplays with titles like Decimator and Offensive from Qasar 13 read their work to...

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Lucy Caldwell: Intimacies review - exploring the empty spaces

Lydia Bunt

In the first short story of Lucy Caldwell’s collection Intimacies, “Like This”, one of the worst possible things that could ever happen to a parent occurs. On the spur of a stressful...

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Maylis de Kerangal: Painting Time review - safer in simulation

Charlie Stone

"Trompe-l’œil," explains the director of the Institut de Peinture in Brussels, “is the meeting of a painting and a gaze, conceived for a particular point of view, and defined by the effect it is...

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The Pursuit of Love, BBC One review - extravagantly entertaining

Matt Wolf

Nancy Mitford's 1945 literary sensation looks poised to be the TV talking point of the season, assuming the first episode of The Pursuit of Love sustains its utterly infectious...

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Sunjeev Sahota: China Room review - separate, related lives

India Lewis

China Room, Sunjeev Sahota’s third novel, is a familiar, ancestral tale: the...

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Extract: Blackface by Ayanna Thompson

theartsdesk

Nearly a year has passed since George Floyd was killed by...

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Kate Lebo: The Book of Difficult Fruit review - a rich, juicy delight

Jessica Payn

Two years ago, I became preoccupied with beetroot. I didn’t want to eat it, particularly, or learn new ways to cook this crimson-purple veg. Instead I hunted down stories of the “beet-rave”, as it...

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Michael Spitzer: The Musical Human review - charting our age-old relationship with music

Jon Turney

Music and time each dwell inside the other. And the more you attend to musical sounds, the more complex their temporal entanglements become....

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Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott: Failures of State review - a devastating exposé, slightly mistimed

Sarah Collins

Almost a year ago, in the midst of the first national lockdown, The Sunday Times broke the news that Boris Johnson had failed to attend five consecutive Cobra meetings in the lead up to...

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latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Music Reissues Weekly: Rupert’s People - Dream In My Mind

Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” was an instant phenomenon. Recorded in April 1967 and issued as a single on 12 May after pre-release play...

Fidelio, Garsington Opera review - a battle of sunshine and...

Sometimes, as the first act of Beethoven’s Fidelio closes, the chorus of prisoners discreetly fade away backstage as their brief taste of...

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theartsdesk Q&A: director Andreas Dresen on his anti-Naz...

Andreas Dresen directs socially engaged realist films that invariably relay personal and political messages; the result can be tough but is...

Hercules, Theatre Royal Drury Lane review - new Disney stage...

Many years ago, reviewing pantomime for the first time, I recall looking around in the stalls. My brain was saying, “This is...

Alfred Brendel 1931-2025 - a personal tribute

Alfred Brendel’s death earlier this month came as a shock, but it wasn’t unexpected. His health had gradually deteriorated over the last year or...

Chicken Town review - sluggish rural comedy with few laughs...

Fans of the character comedian Graham Fellows will possibly turn up for this British film starring the man who created the punk parody...

Album: Lorde - Virgin

Lorde’s trajectory is continually fascinating. From the minimalist, sparse electropop of Pure Heroine to the similar but more grandiose...

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