Reviews Archive

Opera House – in pictures Das Rheingold directed by Barrie Kosky for the Royal Opera. Photograph: Monika Rittershaus/Royal Opera House

Review

An earthy, austere Ring

Barrie Kosky’s highly anticipated Ring Cycle opens with a Rheingold that turns the focus onto Erda, the earth mother, the work’s presiding presence.

Paul Lay September 13, 2023

A portrait of Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1623-1673), the 17th century English aristocrat, philosopher, poet, scientist, fiction-writer, and playwright. Peter Lely, 1665.

Review

The many worlds of Margaret Cavendish

A new exploration of the extraordinary life and a remarkable mind of Margaret Cavendish, written with lucidity and verve.

Mathew Lyons September 7, 2023

Review

The ins and outs of the European project

A fresh, exciting but flawed analysis of the EU’s civilisational mission.

Samuel Rubinstein September 4, 2023

Diogenes sitting in his tub by Jean-Léon Gerôme (1860).

Review

Mad dog Diogenes

Truth and fiction elide in the life of the colourful figurehead of cynicism, which presents a considerable challenge to the biographer.

Armand D'Angour August 31, 2023

György Kurtág’s Endgame performed at the Proms.

Review

György Kurtág contemplates his endgame

The 97-year-old is one of the last living links to the defining postwar composers of the European avant-garde.

Benjamin Poore August 30, 2023

Zadie Smith at a literature festival at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele.

Review

Zadie Smith’s weighty Mantel piece

Slightly academic, deeply researched, and typically self-referential, Zadie Smith’s first attempt at a historical novel is, despite its debts, novel.

Lucy Thynne August 23, 2023

A board promoting the exhibition Naples in Paris is pictured at the Louvre museum in Paris.

Review

Ransacking Naples

The Museo e Bosco Reale di Capodimonte – Naples’ foremost museum of art – has decided to lend an unprecedented number of its artworks to the Louvre. But this glittering display of ..

Alexander Lee August 21, 2023

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Credit: GL Archive / Alamy Stock Photo

Review

Hegel’s philosophy of history

Richard Bourke's latest study offers a powerful sense of why Hegel’s audiences were left spellbound by his analysis of ‘the successive missteps in the progress of moral life’.

Jeremy Jennings August 16, 2023

Map of the Roman Empire in the 4th Century. Credit: Classic Image / Alamy Stock Photo

Review

The limits of the Roman Empire

With the release of 'Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age', Tom Holland completes his three-volume study of Imperial Rome, and reveals that its emperors, good and bad, were larg..

Andrew Sillett August 10, 2023