Maybe it’s just me, but the publication of John Updike’s selected letters, masterfully assembled and presented by James Schiff, doesn’t appear to have been the parade event that might have been expected. The reviews have been largely laudatory, marbled with tribute to Updike’s impeccable filigree, effortless versatility, unfaltering application and sleek plumage,...
Betwixt and between is a strange place for any major writer to be more than a decade and a half after their death, and Updike’s standing in the literary hereafter remains profoundly iffy. It’s one thing to fall out of fashion, another to fall out of favour, and Updike seems to have fallen out of both while still being suspended mid-air, cushioned by the thermals while posterity figures out what to do with him.
Among the overseas guests invited by Tommy Robinson to speak at the Unite the Kingdom rally in London last September was George Simion, a far-right politician who had lost to the liberal candidate in the Romanian presidential election in May. The rally, an all-you-can-eat buffet of anger, conspiracies and victimhood, drew more than a hundred thousand people who broadly share the idea that...
Călin Georgescu’s entire political programme, in so far as he has one, is based on the need to heal Romania by creating – or, as he portrays it, restoring – a synthetic medieval country, agrarian, artisanal, patriarchal, Orthodox Christian, self-sufficient in organic food, purged of chemicals, purged of modernity, purged of everything and everyone he dislikes.
Lot 9058, a damp-stained and mildewed medieval Greek liturgical book, went up for auction at Christie’s in New York on 29 October 1998. It was embroiled in controversy: the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem had already brought an injunction against Christie’s, claiming the book had been stolen from a monastery in Constantinople during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire....
For Archimedes, the mathematical and physical worlds were as real as each other and mutually reinforcing. To know something about the physical world, you could use maths to model it. But more radically, you could also use the physical world to open up and model mathematical ideas: balances, levers and floating objects could be treated as geometrical proofs.
In a print made by the Italian engraver Giuseppe Maria Mitelli at the end of the 17th century, a group of excited men spies two figures on horseback in the distance. The men point; they shout; they chatter among themselves. ‘There he is, there he is, soon we’ll know everything!’ The print is called ‘Il corriere in lontananza aspettato dagli appassionati di...
In early modern Europe, news took many forms. It could be words exchanged by the people who haunted Venice’s Rialto. You might hear news in a barbershop, a pharmacy or a London coffee house; out in the street, you could listen to the headlines being relayed by ballad-singers, whose public performances turned news into catchy tunes. In the countryside, an inn where post was collected and travellers stopped for a meal or a night’s sleep would be the site of the freshest news.
The US National Archives in Washington contain a letter to President Truman from a concerned citizen called Phyllis Craig, who accuses him of wanting to ‘fill our once fine country with morons and other unworthies who are here in large numbers through lax immigration laws to get all they can out of America and bring nothing but filth and self-interest’. The letter is dated 26...
Ideological exclusion at the border seems anachronistic now, when all human knowledge is accessible online, video-conferencing software is installed on every laptop, and ideas and information can be shared instantaneously across borders. Can anyone really believe today that the denial of visas to foreigners with supposedly dangerous beliefs will have the effect of keeping those beliefs at bay?
In October 1961, John F. Kennedy and the entire White House press corps decamped to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to watch US airborne forces put on a show of power. It was the president’s first foray out of the Boston-Washington DC corridor to ‘meet the people’, and in his acerbic book The Best and the Brightest, published a decade later, David Halberstam described it as...
There is an undeniable symmetry between surges in drug use in the US and the country’s covert operations overseas. The wars in Indochina gave the US heroin epidemics; Latin America, a plague of powder and crack cocaine; the war on terror, heroin again and prescription opioids.
In the Brazilian countryside, a man is driving in the wrong direction. It’s 1977, and he’s been on the road for three days. As his yellow Volkswagen Beetle pulls into a remote petrol station, we see what he is about to encounter: a dead body on the ground, crudely covered with cardboard.
Wagner Moura, playing the driver, clocks the body and attempts to reverse before the...
Like Walter Salles’s I’m Still Here, which had a similarly successful run last year, The Secret Agent is set during the military dictatorship in Brazil. Unlike Salles’s film, however, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s occasionally breaks out of its apparent genre – the political thriller – to pause for a cinematic joke.
What do we mean when we call someone a ‘character’? It’s often a way of indicating that a person habitually says or does things that most people wouldn’t say or do. It might be that the character makes risqué jokes, or that he likes to abseil down tall buildings while wearing a pink Spider-Man costume, or that he’s actually just a pain in the arse. My...
What do we mean when we call someone a ‘character’? It’s often a way of indicating that a person habitually says or does things that most people wouldn’t say or do. It might be that the character makes risqué jokes, or that he likes to abseil down tall buildings while wearing a pink Spider-Man costume, or that he’s actually just a pain in the arse.
In November 1907 William James, professor of philosophy at Harvard, received an invitation from Oxford. It came from Manchester College – now Harris Manchester and a college of the university, but then an autonomous dissenting institution with a strong Unitarian character, recently relocated from London: its business was to cater to Nonconformist students who were still barred from...
‘Art arises,’ Auden writes, ‘out of our desire for both beauty and truth and our knowledge that they are not identical.’ We want things two ways, which analysis says we cannot have; but for a moment a poem lets us, in a way that discursive prose, for instance, cannot.
‘Dear residents! If you’re in the lift when the lights go off, don’t be scared,’ read the printed A4 sheet stuck to the inside of the rickety elevator in an apartment block on Kyiv’s left bank. ‘When the power comes back, count to ten before pressing the button.’ A ‘chaotic pressing of buttons’ might cause the lift to fail, in which case...
It was -10ºC outside and only 10ºC in Yulia’s flat, but she told me this was a good day: the radiators weren’t stone cold. Engineers had reconnected the building to the district heating network, two weeks after the massive Russian attack on the city’s thermal power plants. She touched a radiator, beaming, and I did the same; it was lukewarm at best.
The word ‘vampire’ entered common parlance in the Anglophone world in 1732, as sensational reports arrived via German newspapers about an episode on the Serbian front in the wars between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. A soldier called Arnaut Pavle had died after breaking his neck falling from a hay wagon. It was said that he had been troubled by vampires throughout his life...
It’s understandable that the dead should be angry or vengeful: after all, they have suffered a terrible calamity. There may be, as Freud proposed in Totem and Taboo, a ‘universal conviction that the dead, thirsting for blood, draw the living after them’. Death opens a portal that must be policed: in every human culture, burial is hedged about with ritual observance. Yet in certain historical moments the threat of the dangerous dead has flared up into a desperate and persistent conflict with the living.
After Brigitte Bardot’s death in December, the editorial in Paris-Match was desolate: the country had lost ‘its wife, its daughter, its mother, its confidante … its conscience, its Marianne’; French cinema had ‘faded’, no one would again embody ‘liberty and beauty’ as she had; ‘tears will flow.’ Bardot was one of France’s...
Since her death, I’ve often imagined I’m looking at a long montage of scenes on analogue film stock from Bardot’s life and career. The projector whirrs. As the story races from one episode to the next, I’m edgy about where it’s going. Then mercifully, after a few clips from Le Mépris, I’m saved by a mechanical fault. The rest of the Bardot saga – the retreat into outlandish attitudes, the tawdry homophobia, the platinum nativism – has vanished from the archive.
In photography the line between grace and shame is often blurred. We are apt to ask a simplifying question: are we looking at bodies exalted or abused? Things are rarely so straightforward. The Ukrainian artist Boris Mikhailov published his photographic series Case History as a book in 1999, and the following year the Photographers’ Gallery in London mounted its first retrospective of...
Boris Mikhailov’s work as a photographer had been seditious from the outset. In 1965 he was working as an engineer in a Kharkiv factory when he was given a camera and tasked with documenting the facility. The KGB soon found out that he was using the factory’s darkroom to print nude photographs of his wife; Mikhailov lost his job and narrowly escaped prison. But he carried on taking pictures as a mordant and playful artist of the clandestine Ukrainian avant-garde.
Preaching before Edward VI and his council in June 1548, Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, reflected that ‘in my time hath come many alterations.’ Gardiner was referring to the break with Rome, the dissolution of the monasteries and the iconoclastic fervour of Edward’s reign, each of which represented a ‘great alteration’ of policy and sentiment. Further...
Art in Tudor England was more than just decoration. Occupants of a precarious throne, passed down through a series of unexpected heirs (the second son, a minor, two daughters), English monarchs of the 16th century had continuous need of burnishing. They commissioned artists to produce pieces that projected a glorious heritage and irrefutable authority.
Acelebrated 17th-century poet composes, over many years, his own eccentric version of Christian theology. Along the way he becomes blind, and so dictates the work to scribes, with additions, revisions and recopyings as it proceeds. Before he can publish his treatise the political winds shift, and it is not printed in his lifetime. After the poet’s death an attempt is made to have it...
De Doctrina Christiana matters because it mattered to Milton. You can ignore it and still enjoy his poetry, but if you become seriously interested in Milton your interest will sooner or later extend to his religious views, and once that happens, De Doctrina Christiana is a vast, detailed record of his thought on the subject he considered more important than any other.
ICE have gone from wearing tactical army gear to civilian garb; I have even seen photos of agents in keffiyehs. They have changed their cars . . .
Starmer’s apology to Jeffrey Epstein’s victims is part of a reputational clean-up that may keep him in office, for now. If apologies can . . .
Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time show was a magic trick that revealed what those who refer to other people as ‘illegal aliens’ would prefer . . .
When I was at nursery school in Beijing in the 1970s, there was a teacher who seemed to find tireless pleasure in tormenting the children. Living . . .
Much of our politics now consists of performance rather than governance. The calculations are short-term by design: win the week, dominate the . . .
My friend Mahmoud called to check on me at the beginning of January. We hadn’t been in touch for a while. I told him, as always, that I missed . . .
In 2023, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution to ask the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to clarify, first, the obligations . . .
‘The effectiveness of terror depends almost entirely on the degree of social atomisation, the disappearance of ... organised opposition,’ . . .
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.
This year’s Winter Lectures include Amia Srinivasan on politics and psychoanalysis (12 December), Adam Shatz on ideas of America (16 January) and Seamus Perry on pluralism and the modern poet (30 January).
View details of each lecture and buy tickets here.
In the next issue: Michael Dobson on Stephen Greenblatt; Erin Maglaque on Caravaggio.
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