Boyd Tonkin

United Kingdom

Writer, Journalist and Literary Critic at Freelance

Chair @TheOrwellPrize fiction 2023; Benson Medallist @RSLiterature; words @FTLifeArts @TheEconomist @WSJ @TheTLS; '100 Best Novels in Translation' @Galileobooks

Articles

St John Passion, Academy of Ancient Music, Cummings, Barbican review - conscience against conformism

5 days ago | theartsdesk.com | Boyd Tonkin

In a programme note for the St John Passion at the Barbican, the Academy of Ancient Music’s chief executive called their Easter performances of Bach’s compressed gospel tragedy a “ritual”. You understand why that word claims its place. However, there’s not much consciously liturgical about the AAM’s musical approach.
Five virtuoso, visionary novels by Mario Vargas Llosa

1 week ago | ft.com | Boyd Tonkin

Mario Vargas Llosa’s death, at 89, brings a literary epoch to a close.
Mario Vargas Llosa — endlessly versatile giant of Latin American literature

1 week ago | ft.com | Boyd Tonkin

Mario Vargas Llosa, who has died aged 89, nearly became president of Peru in 1990.
Ólafsson, Goldberg Variations, Wigmore Hall review – Bach in the shadow of Beethoven

1 week ago | theartsdesk.com | Boyd Tonkin

Víkingur Ólafsson had something to prove at the Wigmore Hall. And prove it he did, even if, this time, his Goldberg Variations left a few features of Bach’s inexhaustible keyboard panorama at the edge of his pianistic picture. The much-loved Icelandic chart-topper had promised Beethoven’s final three sonatas for this concert.
Alastair Niven obituary

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Boyd Tonkin

Alastair Niven, who has died aged 81, felt that he had spent his whole life “in one long conversation”. The settings changed, but the dialogue – and the connections it forged – went on. The foremost literary administrator and diplomat of his time, he opened up the Arts Council, the British Council and other bodies to the creative energies of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and their diasporic communities in the UK.
Alastair Niven obituary

2 weeks ago | msn.com | Boyd Tonkin

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Laila Lalami taps deftly into the terrors of our times

2 weeks ago | thespectator.com | Boyd Tonkin

“In dreams begins responsibility,” wrote W.B. Yeats. In the near-future America imagined by Laila Lalami, culpability starts there, too. Charged with the prevention of potential crimes, the Risk Assessment Administration monitors not just every aspect of citizens’ behavior but, via tiny “neuroprosthetics,” the hidden drives revealed in sleep.
Murder she imagined: The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami reviewed

3 weeks ago | spectator.com.au | Boyd Tonkin

The Dream Hotel Bloomsbury Circus, pp.323, 16.99 ‘In dreams begins responsibility,’ wrote W.B. Yeats. In the near-future America imagined by Laila Lalami, culpability starts there, too. Charged with the prevention of potential crimes, the Risk Assessment Administration monitors not just every aspect of citizens’ behaviour but, via tiny ‘neuroprosthetics’, the hidden drives revealed in sleep.
Murder she imagined: The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami reviewed

3 weeks ago | spectator.co.uk | Boyd Tonkin

‘In dreams begins responsibility,’ wrote W.B. Yeats. In the near-future America imagined by Laila Lalami, culpability starts there, too. Charged with the prevention of potential crimes, the Risk Assessment Administration monitors not just every aspect of citizens’ behaviour but, via tiny ‘neuroprosthetics’, the hidden drives revealed in sleep.
Verdi Requiem, Philharmonia, Muti, RFH review - new sparks from an old flame

3 weeks ago | theartsdesk.com | Boyd Tonkin

Forget, for a moment, the legend and the lustre. If you knew nothing about Riccardo Muti’s half-century of history with Verdi’s Messa da Requiem for the writer-patriot Alessandro Manzoni – he first gave it with the Philharmonia back in 1974 – and came fresh to this conductor with this work, would it shake the soul? On the evidence of the 83-year-old maestro’s performance with the same orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall last night, the answer would have to be a resonant affirmative.