sat 14/06/2025

book reviews and features

Marcel Proust: Letters to the Lady Upstairs - a very slim volume

Sebastian Scotney

Marcel Proust was a prolific letter-writer. He wrote tens of thousands of them, and at speed, as can be seen from the two facsimiles which are included with the text of Letters to the Lady...

Read more...

Philip Pullman: La Belle Sauvage review - not quite equal

Katherine Waters

La Belle Sauvage, the first instalment of Philip Pullman’s eagerly-awaited new trilogy The Book of Dust, opens in the Trout, a rambling Thames-side pub on the outskirts of Port...

Read more...

Peggy Seeger: First Time Ever - A Memoir, review - a remarkable life

Liz Thomson

Seeger. A name to strike sparks with almost anyone, whether or not they have an interest in folk music...

Read more...

Niall Ferguson: The Square and the Tower review - of groups and power

Marina Vaizey

The controversial historian Niall Ferguson is the author of some dozen books, including substantial...

Read more...

Alan Hollinghurst: The Sparsholt Affair - pictures at an exhibition, with telling gaps

David Nice

Television has paid its dues to the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act - rather feebly, with some rotten acting, in Man in an Orange Shirt; brilliantly, with mostly superb...

Read more...

Henning Mankell: After the Fire review - of death and redemption

Marina Vaizey

The dour, reclusive disgraced doctor Fredrik Welin has appeared once before in Henning Mankell’s work, in The...

Read more...

h.Club 100 Awards 2017: The Winners

theartsdesk

At a festive ceremony on Tuesday night at The Hospital Club in central London, the winners...

Read more...

Orhan Pamuk: Istanbul, Memories and the City review – a masterpiece upgraded

Boyd Tonkin

Along with Balzac’s Paris and Dickens’s London, Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul now ranks as one of the most illustrious author-trademarked cities in literary history. Yet, as...

Read more...

Roddy Doyle: Smile review - return of the repressed

Boyd Tonkin

Although he made his name with the generally upbeat grooves and licks of his Barrytown Trilogy, Roddy Doyle has often played Irish family and social life as a blues full of sorrow and regret. In...

Read more...

Claire Tomalin: A Life of My Own review - the biographer on herself

Marina Vaizey

The title says it all, or at least quite a lot. Luminously intelligent, an exceptionally hard worker, bilingual in French, a gifted...

Read more...

Pages

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

The future of Arts Journalism

 

You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!

We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £49,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d

And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Tornado review - samurai swordswoman takes Scotland by storm

The opening images of Tornado are striking. A wild-haired young woman in Japanese peasant garb runs for her life through a barren forest...

Hamlet Hail to the Thief, RSC, Stratford review - Radiohead...

The safe transfer of power in post-war Western democracies was once a given. The homely Pickfords Removals van outside Number Ten...

Lollipop review - a family torn apart

On leaving prison, Lollipop’s thirtyish single mum Molly discovers that reclaiming her kids from social care is akin to doing lengths in...

Rachel Jones: Gated Canyons, Dulwich Picture Gallery review...

I first came across Rachel Jones in 2021 at the Hayward Gallery’s painting show Mixing it Up: Painting Today. I was blown away by the...

Album: The Young Gods - Appear Disappear

Swiss electro-rockers, Young Gods have been around for 40 years, but this in no way should suggest that they’ve gone soft in their old age. These...

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life review - persuading us that the...

Do the French do irony? Well, was Astérix a Gaul? Obviously they do, and do it pretty well to judge by many of their movies down the...

The King of Pangea, King's Head Theatre review - grief...

There’s an old theatre joke. “The electric chair is too good for a monster like that. They should send him out of town with a new...

Album: Sam Binga - Sam Binga Presents Club Orthodontics

When I was writing the introduction to my book, Bass, Mids, Tops: An Oral History of Soundsystem Culture, I came up with a phrase, which...

Yoshitomo Nara, Hayward Gallery review - sickeningly cute ki...

It’s been a long time since an exhibition made me feel physically sick. The Hayward Gallery is currently hosting a retrospective of the...

newsletter

Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday!

Simply enter your email address in the box below

View previous newsletters