Legacies of the War on Terror

Jackson Lears

Six weeks​ after President George W. Bush launched what the White House called a Global War on Terror, in October 2001, the journalist Bob Woodward asked the vice president, Dick Cheney, when the war would end. ‘Not in our lifetime,’ Cheney said. One can picture his barely suppressed smirk, a facial tic familiar from interviews. Cheney, and by implication ‘we’, had...

 

The First Bibliophiles

Anthony Grafton

Humanists knew that they were imitating the ancients when they sat and talked in libraries. But they knew little about what these lost collections looked like or included. After all, even library terminology was slippery. Bibliotheca could refer to anything from a single compendious book, such as the Scriptures, to a single cabinet or a whole collection.

 

The World since 7 October

Adam Shatz

On​ 18 June, the sixth day of Israel’s attack on Iran, David Petraeus gave some unsolicited advice to Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times. Trump, he said, should deliver an ultimatum to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordering him to dismantle Iran’s uranium enrichment programme or face ‘the complete destruction of your country and your regime and your...

 

Farewell to ‘Hamlet’

Barbara Everett

Two actors​ enter to begin a play, in an assumed midnight darkness. Both are military men, sentinels. One, Barnardo, barks at the other, Francisco, the play’s first line: ‘Who’s there?’ This incisiveness turns out to be mistaken: the man challenged is the still functioning true guard, who corrects Barnardo: ‘Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.’

...

 

Tony Tulathimutte’s Anti-autofiction

Becca Rothfeld

Awoman in a field​ cradling a baby and whispering: ‘This is what they want to take from you.’ A man explaining that bathing in cold water reduced his age by three years. An animated frog. A group of Mormon mothers performing a synchronised dance routine, then squabbling about their infidelities in a series of reels. Shitposts. Earnest sadposts. Thirst traps. A bulging man who...

 

Protein to Prion

Stephen Buranyi

The​ mad cow disease crisis began in 1984, with reports of cows ‘acting strangely’ on a farm in Sussex, and ended 32 years later, with the last reported death from a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. It was clear early on that something in the brain matter of cows was causing the infection, and that its vector was the charnel houses in which the brains and spines of...

Subscribe now and try 6 months for £12

Subscribe now and try 6 months for £12

Subscribe to the London Review of Books for just £12 – get unlimited online access plus the print issue every two weeks.

 

Satire without the Jokes

Colin Burrow

Satire​ is a great angry sprawling mass. It’s one of those literary phenomena which is impossible to define but which most people recognise when they see it – unless they’re as dim as the Irish bishop who is supposed to have said of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels that ‘for his part he hardly believed a word of it’ (‘hardly’ is a...

Short Cuts

Who’s afraid of Palestine Action?

Huw Lemmey

It is now​ a criminal offence, under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000, to express support for Palestine Action, a direct-action group formed in 2020 with the aim of disrupting the British factories, installations and infrastructure that supply and support the Israeli military. Their trademark is red paint: they break into arms factories and airbases, and spray the facilities as well as...

 

What Universities Owe

Vincent Brown

On​ Yale’s 300th anniversary in 2001, three graduate students at the university issued a report titled Yale, Slavery and Abolition. It was published by the Amistad Committee, a small organisation in New Haven that seeks to preserve African American history in Connecticut; it is named after the maritime slave revolt of 1839. The report drew attention to the university’s ties to...

Diary

Borno after the Flood

Gazelle Mba

In the early hours​ of 10 September last year, Hauwa woke to discover water pooling beneath her bed. She attempted to stem the flow by stuffing bits of cloth in the gap under the door, but it continued to pour in. People outside were shouting, waking up her five young children. Hauwa couldn’t get all of them out of the house together, but some neighbours came to their aid. Two young...

 

‘Theory and Practice’

Ange Mlinko

Do women​ hate art? ‘I’m going to focus on making art that doesn’t look like art. Art that has the feel of women talking everyday crap, like you and me here, me solving all your problems.’ This is Anti (short for Antigone) talking to the unnamed narrator of Theory and Practice, a graduate student at the University of Melbourne. It is 1986. You can still write a fan...

 

The Rat in the Head

Jon Day

Around a year ago​ a rat died in my kitchen. The first thing I noticed was the cloud of bluebottles flying drunkenly against the window. Then there was the smell, which was fetid and slightly sweet. It took me a while to find the source, and when I eventually pulled up the floorboards there was nothing left of the rat but a shrivelled sack of skin and fur, its tail a mangy question mark. I...

At the Whitney

Amy Sherald’s Subjects

Eleanor Nairne

At his final​ White House Correspondents’ dinner, Barack Obama joked that he had been grizzled by the presidency while Michelle had barely aged a day. ‘She looks so happy to be here … That’s called practice. It’s like learning to do three-minute planks.’ Amy Sherald’s portrait of Michelle Obama speaks to the effort of looking relaxed in the public...

 

John Broderick’s ‘Pilgrimage’

Nicole Flattery

Anyone who grew up​ in a small Irish town knows what it feels like to live under surveillance. Tech autocrats have nothing on the curtain twitchers of Irish villages. In The Pilgrimage, first published in 1961 and recently reissued by McNally Editions, John Broderick writes that ‘the city dweller who passes through a country town and imagines it as sleepy and apathetic is very far from...

 

On the Golf Space

David Trotter

In the summer​ of 2024, Donald Trump played a round of golf at Bedminster, a course he owns in New Jersey, in the company of Bryson DeChambeau, twice winner of the US Open. The ostensible aim was to raise money for charity by teaming up to ‘break 50’ on a par 72 course. The YouTube video of the event reveals that there were indeed some shots played, to the accompaniment of...

Close Readings: New for 2025

Close Readings is a multi-series podcast subscription in which longstanding LRB contributors explore a literary period or theme through a selection of key works. Discover the four new series for 2025 (with new episodes released every Monday): Conversations in Philosophy, Fiction and the Fantastic, Love and Death and Novel Approaches. 

Read more about Close Readings: New for 2025

Partner Events, Spring-Summer 2025

Check back for seasonal announcements, including a preview screening of Hot Milk, adapted from the novel of the same name by Deborah Levy, with special guests Rebecca Lenkiewicz and Fiona Shaw.

Read more about Partner Events, Spring-Summer 2025

Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.

Sign up to our newsletter

For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.

Newsletter Preferences