Review
When sanctuary looks like retreat
Marina Warner’s idea of sanctuary in storytelling is unable to meet her book's ambitions.
Mathew Lyons
July 22, 2025
Reviews
Significant works reviewed by Engelsberg Ideas writers.
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Review
The Constant Wife – a sparkling revival of Somerset Maugham’s masterpiece
A creative re-casting of W. Somerset Maugham's delightful comic drama adds an abundance of clever and amusing innovations.
Alexandra Wilson
July 16, 2025
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Review
Lawrence Durrell’s lost Mediterranean
The lavish, contested prose of Lawrence Durrell preserves an Eastern Mediterranean that has long disappeared – if it ever existed at all.
Guy Stagg
July 14, 2025
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Review
Boccaccio’s boundless energies
Giovanni Boccaccio, author of the 'Decameron' and an aficionado of Dante Alighieri, was a prolific writer in the Tuscan vernacular who made his enduring mark on the Early Renaissan..
Nicholas Morton
July 10, 2025
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Review
The house that Worth built
The first exhibition devoted to the House of Worth tells the unusual story of an English interloper, Charles Frederick Worth, whose name became a byword for Parisian luxury and ref..
Muriel Zagha
July 7, 2025
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Review
In Van Gogh’s footsteps
Anselm Kiefer set out to pay homage to Vincent Van Gogh, but his vast, scorched canvases tell a much darker story than those of his troubled hero, in an uneven exhibition exploring..
Alexandra Wilson
July 4, 2025
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Review
Ithell Colquhoun and Edward Burra’s visions of a fragile world
A new retrospective of 20th-century artists Ithell Colquhoun and Edward Burra reveals how their strange, radical visions were deeply attuned to the unease and upheaval of the postw..
Saffron Swire
June 25, 2025
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Review
Samuel Johnson’s last word
Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary was the most significant cultural achievement of the 18th century, a landmark work of great skill, effort and erudition.
Malcolm Forbes
June 23, 2025
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Review
Under the spell of William Blake
William Blake, the poet-painter who created a mythology all his own, is also the central figure in biographer Philip Hoare’s private cosmos. Such a personal obsession is a major fl..
Michael Prodger
June 17, 2025