The London Review of Books is Europe’s leading magazine of culture and ideas. Published twice a month, it provides a space for some of the world’s best writers to explore a wide variety of subjects in exhilarating detail – from art and politics to science and technology via history and philosophy, not to mention fiction and poetry. In the age of the long read, the LRB remains the pre-eminent exponent of the intellectual essay, admired around the world for its fearlessness, its range and its elegance.
As well as book reviews, memoir and reportage, each issue also contains poems, reviews of exhibitions and movies, ‘short cuts’, letters and a diary, and is available in print, online, and offline via our app. Subscribers enjoy unlimited access to every piece we’ve ever published in our digital archive. Our new website also features a regular blog, an online store, podcasts and short documentaries, plus video highlights from our events programmes on both sides of the Atlantic, and at the London Review Bookshop.
A reader recently described the LRB as ‘the best thing about being a human’. Make it the highlight of your fortnight, too, by taking out a subscription.
History
The London Review of Books was founded in 1979, during the year-long management lock-out at the Times. In June that year, Frank Kermode wrote a piece in the Observer suggesting that a new magazine fill the space left by the temporary absence of the Times Literary Supplement. The first issue of the LRB, edited by Karl Miller, appeared four months later. It included pieces by Miller and Kermode, as well as John Bayley on William Golding and William Empson on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and poems by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney.
Edited by Mary-Kay Wilmers from 1992 to 2021, the LRB now has the largest circulation of any magazine of its kind in Europe (2021 ABC: 91,659). Jean McNicol and Alice Spawls were appointed editors in February 2021. In 2019, our neighbours Faber published London Review of Books: An Incomplete History to mark our 40th anniversary – be sure to buy a copy from the LRB Store.
London Review Bookshop
Alive with the same independent spirit as the magazine, the London Review Bookshop’s impeccable taste, evangelical booksellers and blockbuster programme of author and panel events have made it the city’s favourite place to pass the time in the company of writers and readers. Find us in Bloomsbury, two minutes from the British Museum.
London Review Cake Shop
Enter through the Bookshop and discover some of central London’s most imaginative sandwiches, salads and cakes, a deadly serious selection of teas, and a 21st-century expression of the city’s famous coffee house culture.
LRB Limited is registered in England as No.1485413 at the following address: 28 Little Russell Street, London WC1A 2HN, UK.
