Zbigniew Brzezinski was a difficult man. As a child, he stood out from his three brothers in being ‘emotionally detached and hard to please’, according to his sympathetic biographer, Edward Luce. He slept on hard floors to feel the discomfort experienced by the less fortunate. In his high school yearbook photo, ‘the eye is drawn to his hawklike nose and piercing...
As a Polish émigré and fervent Polish nationalist, Zbigniew Brzezinski focused most of his fear on the Soviet Union. A visceral hostility to the USSR became the driving force behind his career as a policy intellectual, followed by a strong suspicion of post-Soviet Russia. He steered US foreign policy into a militant anti-Russian turn from which it has never recovered.
The Green Party’s Hannah Spencer has won the Gorton and Denton by-election with 41 per cent of the vote. Progressive voters opted decisively for the more explicitly and coherently left-wing party. For Keir Starmer’s Labour, which has staked its existence on appeasing the right, that is a stark message unlikely to be heeded.
The Green Party’s Hannah Spencer has won the Gorton and Denton by-election with 41 per cent of the vote. Progressive voters opted decisively for the more explicitly and coherently left-wing party. For Keir Starmer’s Labour, which has staked its existence on appeasing the right, that is a stark message unlikely to be heeded.
What is it we still want from Christopher Marlowe? To judge from their recent reception, it’s not his plays. Apart from Steven Pimlott’s Doctor Faustus in 2004 and Michael Boyd’s condensed Tamburlaine in 2014, there have been few outstanding Marlowe revivals in the 21st century, and his plays have been put on only in small venues. The second half of Pimlott’s Doctor...
As Stephen Greenblatt’s Dark Renaissance shows despite itself, it is not Marlowe’s life story that we still need, but his plays and poems: we might well want to avert our eyes from the bathetically dismal life of the man who wrote them.
In bed, John Berger was once asked by a lover: who’s your favourite painter? Caravaggio, he replied. There are two kinds of desire, according to Berger: the desire to take and the ‘desire to be taken’. Caravaggio painted the second kind. The desire ‘to lose oneself’, ‘the most abandoned, the most desperate’ form of wanting: this is what Caravaggio...
Clothing, for Caravaggio, worked in the same way as his chiaroscuro, dramatising disclosure and reticence, attraction and concealment. Caravaggio exploits dress not so much as a language, but as a way of posing the question: what is it we’re most susceptible to? A scrap of fur? A feather on a thigh? Hard, burnished armour?
In Williamstown, Kentucky, no small distance from the ‘mountains of Ararat’, the biblical resting place of Noah’s Ark, a 510-foot-long wooden structure rises from a ridge. The Ark Encounter – less than an hour’s drive from Cincinnati International Airport and within a day’s drive of much of the Bible Belt – is an attempt to recreate Noah’s...
Young Earth creationists insist that the Bible be read literally. In their view, to reject biblical chronology or suggest that Noah didn’t actually bring two of every kind on the ark is to doubt the whole Bible, and thereby to undermine the doctrine of Adam’s fall and man’s salvation. As one of the wall texts at the Ark Encounter puts it, ‘if we cannot believe God concerning how He made the universe, then why should we believe Him about the salvation offered through Jesus Christ?’
Donald Trump began seriously thinking about running for office in 1998, so it’s said, when the wrestler Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura won the Minnesota governorship on the Reform Party ticket. Ventura’s campaign had been dismissed as a sideshow by Democrats and Republicans alike. He was no one’s idea of a professional politician and he made that the point. Only a...
The enduring liberal fantasy that Melania Trump is unwilling, trapped, in need of rescue, #FreeMelania, has never squared with the most rigorous reporting about her. Gestures that commentators read during Trump’s first term as signs of misery or resistance often turned out to be projection.
What colour is a divorce certificate? I’d heard it was green – a neat visual counterpoint to the bright red marriage certificate. Red in Chinese culture is the colour of happiness, of joy and also of officialdom. Marriages are announced on red banners; gifts are enclosed in red envelopes. Brides wear red dresses and use red bedsheets, and there are red scraps of firecrackers in...
My husband and I agreed to divorce on the Minor New Year, the day that marks the beginning of preparations for the Chinese New Year. According to tradition, the Kitchen God is worshipped that day. From his position beside the stove, the Kitchen God learns every family secret.
In October last year 2.17 million people, 507,000 of them children, were in contact with mental health services in England. In 2023-24, 958,000 children, 8 per cent of the twelve million children in England, had an active referral to the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services. In 2013-14 this figure was 157,000. Some see in this huge increase evidence of welcome attention...
Overdiagnosis isn’t only a problem in screening; it is a possibility wherever a diagnosis brings harms as well as benefits. Such harms can result not just from treatment but from the impact a diagnosis has on our sense of who we are or what we are capable of.
The ‘Why I Write’ talk or essay has always seemed the most peculiar of literary subgenres, flying as it does in the face of the time-honoured and pretty much unimpeachable injunction to trust the tale not the teller. Lecturing at Berkeley in the spring of 1975, Joan Didion confessed that she had stolen the title of George Orwell’s celebrated attempt at an explanation...
Davis has identified the moment at which she understood that it is possible to derive the material of a story ‘almost entirely from your own life’ as a turning point in her development as a writer. Thoreau wouldn’t have disagreed. ‘Is not the poet bound to write his own biography?’ he once observed. ‘Is there any other work for him but a good journal?
Week after week, year after year, members of the collective formed in 1977, during the Argentine military dictatorship, as Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo have circled the pyramid monument in the square in central Buenos Aires, arm in arm, to demand the return of their forcibly disappeared grandchildren. They’re still marching, often with Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo – the mothers....
Week after week, year after year, members of the collective formed in 1977, during the Argentine military dictatorship, as Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo have circled the pyramid monument in the square in central Buenos Aires, arm in arm, to demand the return of their forcibly disappeared grandchildren. They’re still marching.
Early modernists have long bragged, to the annoyance of medievalists, that their period invented such concepts as ‘the individual’ and ‘scientific rationality’. More recently, medievalists have laid claim to evils such as racism and xenophobia, less to vindicate their period than to place themselves where the academic action is. Entering the vigorous debate over the...
The origin legend was a widespread medieval genre used to account not only for peoples and nations, but also for the rise of cities, dynasties, monasteries and even landscape features. To know who we are, we need to know who we have been, and to that end either myth or history will suffice.
Inscribed in Latin on a large floor slab in the chapel of Eton College is a memorial to a former provost, Sir Henry Wotton, who died, aged 71, in December 1639: ‘Here lies the first author of this sentiment: The itch of disputation is the scab of the churches. Inquire his name elsewhere.’ Izaak Walton was the first to pursue this prompt to biographical appraisal in his Reliquiae...
Intelligence – whether rumour, gossip, hearsay or clandestine leaks – was central to ambassadorial activity. Henry Wotton’s unusual status as a resident Protestant ambassador in a Catholic state allowed him to plant spies in cities including Milan, Turin and Frankfurt while maintaining regular correspondence with English ambassadors in The Hague, Brussels, Paris and Madrid.
Think of a loincloth as an act of diplomacy. The beautiful, fact-crammed catalogue accompanying the British Museum’s Hawaii exhibition (until 25 May) explains that the malo loloa, a long loincloth made of barkcloth, was a metaphor for Hawaii forming alliances. When, just over two hundred years ago, the young King Liholiho (known as Kamehameha II) and Queen Kamāmalu sailed from...
Traditional fabrics bring unifying stories. The most distinctive Hawaiian material, kapa or barkcloth, was wonderfully versatile, used for skirts, bedsheets and, according to one story, the sky. Paper mulberry could be beaten on stone or a wooden anvil to a delicate thinness; the sound of hammering carried across an island.
As Adèle Yon tells it in Mon vrai nom est Elisabeth, when she was eighteen she went to a party, taking with her a bag of weed. A distant cousin who was also at the party made a beeline for her, or for her stash (the two young women hadn’t spoken before). She shared it and left what remained when she went home. Somehow news of this encounter reached her grandparents, giving them...
Adèle Yon says that she enjoys it when the archives lose their footing (‘perdent les pédales’), revealing their ‘polyphonie’ and ‘artifice’. Sometimes, though, when the evidence reveals its polyphony and artifice that’s your cue to ask a follow-up question. At times Yon seems keen to neutralise clashes of testimony by separating them widely in the text.
One of Joseph Wright of Derby’s favourite subjects was Vesuvius erupting by night, which he painted more than thirty times. The drama and peril of the scene attracted him, but he was also drawn to extreme manifestations of light and dark: lava, fire, lightning, smoke. He found that lava in particular could be difficult to paint, because it needed to look fluid, not stiff and static....
Like darkness, light at its most powerful could disorientate, overpower, blind the senses. Joseph Wright of Derby’s contemporary viewers associated his night pieces with a kind of sublime unclarity, a glare or glitter that obscured as much as it illuminated.
The Green Party’s Hannah Spencer has won the Gorton and Denton by-election with 41 per cent of the vote. Progressive voters opted decisively . . .
When the Taliban blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas in March 2001, the destruction was writ large in newspaper headlines and widely condemned. A year . . .
Usually the last days of February are filled with anticipation of the Persian New Year holiday, Nowruz. People shop for new clothes; grocery . . .
Fela’s political career unfolded when a distinctly Nigerian left – rooted in universities, trade unions and parts of the state – was at . . .
A friend in China messaged me on WeChat. ‘What are your thoughts on the plagiarism scandal?’‘What scandal?’ I asked.‘How could you . . .
‘Let the Minion skate!’ people were urging on social media days before the start of the Winter Olympics. Universal Pictures had refused Tomàs-Llorenç . . .
No discussion in British defence and security circles gets very far without someone mentioning the post-Cold War ‘peace dividend’. The idea . . .
I recently applied for a job at a large publishing house and was pleased to clear the first hurdle. They sent me an email: ‘We were impressed . . .
After Roman London was hit by a catastrophic fire in about 125 AD, perhaps the result of another local revolt, it entered a new period of sophistication which saw the emergence of elaborate townhouses for its mercantile and administrative elite, richly embellished with mosaics and wall paintings. But the city had stopped growing, and when a devastating plague arrived in about 165 AD, which may...
After Roman London was hit by a catastrophic fire in about 125 AD, perhaps the result of another local revolt, it entered a new period of sophistication which saw the emergence of elaborate townhouses for its mercantile and administrative elite, richly embellished with mosaics and wall paintings. But the city had stopped growing, and when a devastating plague arrived in about 165 AD, which may well have been Europe’s first encounter with smallpox, it was probably already on a long slow decline caused by its diminishing importance as a trading hub.
‘Information in the early modern world could move no faster than the bodies that carried it,’ John Gallagher wrote recently in the LRB. For a horse and rider, that was just under fifteen kilometres per hour. Yet postal systems, as pioneered by the enterprising Tassis family, were becoming ever more reliable and efficient, at first in northern Italy and then across much of...
‘Information in the early modern world could move no faster than the bodies that carried it,’ John Gallagher wrote recently in the LRB. For a horse and rider, that was just under...
In May 2002, six months after the invasion of Afghanistan but before the Iraq war, the London Review of Books held a debate: ‘The War on Terrorism: Is There an Alternative?’ The panel comprised Tariq Ali, Christopher Hitchens, Jacqueline Rose, Anatol Lieven and Onora O’Neill.President Bush’s ultimatum set the tone: either you’re with us or you’re with the...
In May 2002, six months after the invasion of Afghanistan but before the Iraq war, the London Review of Books held a debate: ‘The War on Terrorism: Is There an Alternative?’ The panel...
When Peter Mandelson was a minister in Gordon Brown’s government he passed confidential advice to Jeffrey Epstein, who had recently been convicted of procuring a child for prostitution. This is among the many extraordinary details of Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein revealed by the release of more than three million pages of documents by the US Justice Department last month....
When Peter Mandelson was a minister in Gordon Brown’s government he passed confidential advice to Jeffrey Epstein, who had recently been convicted of procuring a child for prostitution. This...
In ‘The Light Eaters’ (2024), Zoë Schlanger reports from the frontiers of botany, where researchers are discovering forms of sensing, signalling and responding that challenge our ideas of plants as passive life forms. Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith explore Schlanger’s account of new research into plant behaviour. They examine the case for plant agency – and...
In ‘The Light Eaters’ (2024), Zoë Schlanger reports from the frontiers of botany, where researchers are discovering forms of sensing, signalling and responding that challenge our...
Many thinkers have characterised modernity by its investment in the idea of pluralism, ‘of things being various’, in Louis MacNeice’s phrase. How do the virtues of plurality and difference fit with the more traditional virtues of poetic unity and imaginative order? Seamus Perry considers the ways in which modern poets have responded to the demands of pluralism, and...
Many thinkers have characterised modernity by its investment in the idea of pluralism, ‘of things being various’, in Louis MacNeice’s phrase. How do the virtues of plurality and...
When Jessica Mitford (aka Decca) was eleven, in 1928, she opened a Running Away Account at Drummonds Bank. A few years later she ran away to Spain to help in the fight against Franco, and not long after that moved to the US where she became a naturalised citizen and joined the Communist Party.
The Mitford sisters wrote many books and even more have been written about them, but Carla Kaplan's...
When Jessica Mitford (aka Decca) was eleven, in 1928, she opened a Running Away Account at Drummonds Bank. A few years later she ran away to Spain to help in the fight against Franco, and not long...
The year London was founded will always be disputed, but the most recent archaeological evidence suggests the Romans had created the first settlement on the north bank of the Thames by 48 AD, five years after their invasion. That early military encampment expanded to become a busy, cosmopolitan supply base until it was burned down in the Boudican revolt of 60 AD.
In the first episode of her...
The year London was founded will always be disputed, but the most recent archaeological evidence suggests the Romans had created the first settlement on the north bank of the Thames by 48 AD, five...
‘The very word “America” remains a new, almost completely undefined and extremely controversial proper noun,’ James Baldwin wrote in 1959. ‘No one in the world seems to know exactly what it describes, not even we motley millions who call ourselves Americans.’ Donald Trump’s vision of Fortress America, at war with immigrants, shadowy globalists and...
‘The very word “America” remains a new, almost completely undefined and extremely controversial proper noun,’ James Baldwin wrote in 1959. ‘No one in the world seems...
After following up a lead from a birdwatcher, Rachel Carson drew a web of connections that led to one of the most influential books of the 20th century. Silent Spring (1962) investigated the synthetic pesticides that proliferated after the Second World War, which were assiduously defended by overconfident policymakers, industrial chemists and agribusiness. The book quickly became a bestseller...
After following up a lead from a birdwatcher, Rachel Carson drew a web of connections that led to one of the most influential books of the 20th century. Silent Spring (1962) investigated the...
For the final episode, host Daniel Soar is joined by Patrick Cockburn, Laleh Khalili and Tom Stevenson for a live discussion on the War on Terror and its aftershocks.
They consider the powers and techniques established after 9/11 and now being deployed by the US – in Venezuela, Minneapolis and beyond. What is the legacy of America’s ‘forever wars’ in the Middle East, and...
For the final episode, host Daniel Soar is joined by Patrick Cockburn, Laleh Khalili and Tom Stevenson for a live discussion on the War on Terror and its aftershocks.
They consider the powers and...
Hero and Leander was published in 1598, and anyone who came across it in a stationer’s shop in Elizabethan London would have known that its author was dead, killed in a brawl in Deptford in 1593. Christopher Marlowe’s sensational life as playwright and spy is matched by the wit, sophistication and eroticism of his eccentric retelling of Ovid’s myth, based on a...
Hero and Leander was published in 1598, and anyone who came across it in a stationer’s shop in Elizabethan London would have known that its author was dead, killed in a brawl in...
Not for the first time, theorists of politics are turning to the unconscious and its strange workings – repression and fantasy, libido and death drive, disavowal and displacement – to understand the present conjuncture: a conjuncture of authoritarian strongmen, anti-democratic populism, regressive sexual morality and genocidal war. What form of knowledge does psychoanalysis give us...
Not for the first time, theorists of politics are turning to the unconscious and its strange workings – repression and fantasy, libido and death drive, disavowal and displacement – to...
After following up a lead from a birdwatcher, Rachel Carson drew a web of connections that led to one of the most influential books of the 20th century. Silent Spring (1962) investigated the synthetic pesticides that proliferated after the Second World War, which were assiduously defended by overconfident policymakers, industrial chemists and agribusiness. The book quickly became a bestseller...
After following up a lead from a birdwatcher, Rachel Carson drew a web of connections that led to one of the most influential books of the 20th century. Silent Spring (1962) investigated the...
‘Is it a bubble?’ John Lanchester asked in a recent LRB of the colossal amounts of money pouring into AI firms. ‘Of course it’s a bubble. The salient questions are how we got here, and what happens next.’
On this episode of the podcast, John joins Thomas Jones to discuss some possible answers to those questions. They talk about the history of companies...
‘Is it a bubble?’ John Lanchester asked in a recent LRB of the colossal amounts of money pouring into AI firms. ‘Of course it’s a bubble. The salient questions...
Albert Camus’s short life began in Algiers in 1913 and ended in a car crash near Paris in 1960. After being rejected from the École Normale because of a failed medical assessment, Camus became a journalist in Algiers and planned his writing career around three concepts based on the figures of Sisyphus, Prometheus and Nemesis, a scheme that he never finished.
Jonathan Rée...
Albert Camus’s short life began in Algiers in 1913 and ended in a car crash near Paris in 1960. After being rejected from the École Normale because of a failed medical assessment,...
In this feature-length documentary, Anthony Wilks traces the connections between the events of Hobsbawm’s life and the history he told, from his teenage years in Germany as Hitler came to power and his communist membership, to the jazz clubs of 1950s Soho and the makings of New Labour, taking in Italian bandits, Peruvian peasant movements and the development of nationalism in...
In this feature-length documentary, Anthony Wilks traces the connections between the events of Hobsbawm’s life and the history he told, from his teenage years in Germany as Hitler came...
On the Close Readings podcast, longstanding LRB contributors explore a literary period or theme through a selection of key works.
Listen to our four new series running in 2026: Narrative Poems, Nature in Crisis, London Revisited and Who’s afraid of realism? plus a free bonus series, The Man Behind the Curtain.
With David Runciman, Lyse Doucet, Thant Myint-U and Christopher Clark
The LRB and David Runciman’s Past Present Future podcast have assembled a panel to reflect on the state of democracy in the West and around the world. Will democracy survive as a 21st-century form of government, or are we watching it slide towards bankruptcy, first gradually, then suddenly, as Hemingway put it?
In the next issue: Andy Beckett on Gordon Brown; Nicholas Spice on Schubert; Joanna Biggs on Solvej Balle.
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