Franklin Nelson works at the Financial Times, commissioning and writing on UK politics, the economy and society as well as books and the arts. His reviews, features and essays have been published by the TLS, the London Review of Books and Wasafiri.
Franklin Nelson
Reviews
Zineb Sedira
Zineb Sedira's installation at Tate Britain brings 20th century African cinema to centre stage
22nd July 2026
Close Up
Regarding Turner
What does knowing of the revered British artist's investment in chattel slavery mean for his legacy?
3rd March 2026
Close Up
Frank Bowling
An interview with one of the foremost artists of his generation, Sir Frank Bowling
4th February 2026
Close Up
Between tradition and innovation: Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s cross-cultural currents
Drawing of parallels between the art of Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Kerry James Marshall
31st December 2025
Reviews
The best books of 2025
Literary highlights of 2025, from Arundhati Roy's memoir Mother Mary Comes To Me to Sarah Howe's poetry collection Foretokens Flesh
24th December 2025
Reviews
Donald Locke
A sombre and powerful showcase of Donald Locke's work over five decades
19th November 2025
Close Up
Mother Tongues
The Moroccan writer and filmmaker Abdellah Taïa's dedication to his mother
18th June 2025
Reviews
Frank Bowling: Collage
The revered ninety-one-year-old painter explores collage as a conceptual tool.
22nd May 2025
Close Up
Remembering Mario Vargas Llosa
The Peruvian writer whose pen was his weapon of choice
8th May 2025
Original Series
Living reinvention
Journalist Franklin Nelson on first coming across the work of Malcolm X and how he appreciates its clarity and force today.
7th May 2025
Reviews
Theft
Abdulrazak Gurnah's tale of a young Zanzibari trio caught between their dreams and their reality.
16th April 2025
Close Up
Chester Himes
Dream worlds, places where the importance of belief and hope chafe against the urgency of reality.
2nd April 2025
Close Up
Encountering African Art Afresh
The Museum of Contemporary Art Al-Maaden and Marrakesh’s Cultural Heritage
12th March 2025
Close Up
Cristina Rivera Garza: Re-membering Violence
Rivera Garza’s fiction Interrogates the acts of violence in Mexico
26th February 2025
My Hit List
Franklin Nelson’s cultural highlights
Franklin Nelson on Annie Ernaux's The Years, the Media Confidential podcast, Claudette Johnson's Darker than Blue, Ernest Cole's photos on surviving South African apartheid, and Meshell Ndegeocello's gospel tribute to James Baldwin.
29th January 2025
Events
‘I live in memory’
Jamaica Kincaid is a former New Yorker staff writer and prize-winning author of fiction and non-fiction. She talks with Franklin Nelson about how her childhood and adolescence in the then British colony of Antigua has inspired her latest book, An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children, in collaboration with the artist, Kara Walker.
8th January 2025
Reviews
Colonial Countryside
An anthology of creative responses to stately houses with colonial histories
25th September 2024
Close Up
Abeba Esse
Zak Ove's diasporic journey at the Chelsea Flower Show illuminates invisible histories
23rd May 2024
Close Up
Maryse Condé
Crossing continents: a tribute to the pioneering Guadeloupean author who traversed continents, genres and centuries with her writing
15th May 2024
Reviews
How To Say Babylon
A Jamaican memoirist rejects her father's doctrine of Rastafari
15th November 2023
Reviews
The Mothership Connection
How Zak Ové's art recalls the spirit of his father Horace Ové
4th October 2023
Franklin Nelson
Franklin Nelson works for the Financial Times, commissioning and writing on UK politics, the economy and society as well as books and the arts.