The strange pleasure of reading Michel Houellebecq, when he’s writing well, lies in the sense of being pinned down...| London Review of Books
Resistance is at once recognition and a fantasy of catastrophe; indeed, in resisting one has always leaped forward to...| London Review of Books
We’re so used to voice as confession, as a form of radical honesty, that it can be hard to appreciate Gertrude Stein’s socialised way of talking, which involves not precision but wish fulfilment, fantasy, repression, a devastating insistence on charm.| London Review of Books
Any book made by hand is unique, but the Pearl Manuscript’s claim to uniqueness is unparalleled: the manuscript appears never to have been copied or circulated, nor to have been known to anybody except the people who owned it. This is even stranger than it may at first seem.| London Review of Books
Paintings – or perhaps, in the first instance, prints and reproductions – seem to have attracted Henry Clay Frick from a young age. When, in the early 1870s, he applied for a loan from a Pittsburgh bank, the partner who authorised it noted in his report: ‘Maybe a little too enthusiastic about pictures but not enough to hurt; knows his business down to the ground; advise making loan.’| London Review of Books
At a time when most conversation about the arts remained stuck in an Oxbridge common room, Eno was a one-man laboratory of alternative takes, and a major role model for young autodidacts like myself: have the courage to be truly pretentious!| London Review of Books
What exactly was Tony Benn’s significance? He was certainly an unusually clear analyst and critic of the distribution of power in Britain. ‘We live in a strange country,’ he said in his final Commons speech, in 2001. By that he meant a country where power is often hidden, expressed in code or euphemism, or slyly shifted from one section of the establishment to another.| London Review of Books
For the hospital, and for the NHS, it was a closed case, another preventable death: medicine is imperfect, such things happen. I couldn’t accept that. Looking back, I was setting the immeasurable private horror of my daughter’s death against its tangible bureaucratic result: a handful of promised hospital improvements and several doctors being asked to ‘reflect’ on their decisions.| London Review of Books
Reform has been accused of lacking policy: its critics say it’s a party of Farage and his epigones, with few firm plans for running the country. This isn’t entirely true. An overarching Reform theory of government is emerging: Monday Club Toryism allied with the deracination of what Trumpists call ‘the administrative state’.| London Review of Books
To understand the intellectual coordinates of Trumpism requires us to look in less conventional places and to pay more attention to less obvious moments and rhythms. We may also need to reckon with the fact that, more and more, ideas can achieve influence and credibility by circumventing the world of academia altogether.| London Review of Books
Ruysch was a meticulous observer of nature, an artist whose insects seem real enough to buzz out of their frames. But her most innovative compositions have an unlikely aspect, a touch of the improbability that comes from throwing lilies and cabbage roses together with fruit from halfway around the world.| London Review of Books
I don’t think there’s anyone on today’s bestseller lists as accomplished on the page as Elmore Leonard was; he had the extraordinary ability to evoke a place with the sparsest of descriptions and fill in a character with just a few lines of dialogue or a seemingly inconsequential gesture. He did more with less than any crime writer I can think of.| London Review of Books
Autumn cyclamen,booby-trapping underfootlike a mistimed spring,clutch of shame’s blushes,flock of flamingos balancedon slender stemwareor mad flight of hats,magenta origami,by...| London Review of Books
John Singer Sargent was a certain kind of rootless American. Born in Italy, where he first learned to sketch and paint, he set foot in the US only at the age of twenty and spent most of his adult life in Europe. In short, he was himself a product of the new society, and was instinctively drawn to its more dynamic protagonists.| London Review of Books
One could say that Ben Pester’s Expansion Project is about a man who loses his mind at work, but that’s not really right, because the categories of ‘man’, ‘mind’ and ‘work’ are somehow looser and more porous than one might expect.| London Review of Books
Among the difficulties of talking about denunciation is that there are so many words for it, along with sharply opposed understandings of its morality. If you denounce me, you’re a snitch with a personal agenda. If I denounce you, it’s because I’m a public-spirited citizen.| London Review of Books
The letters page from London Review of Books Vol. 47 No. 17 (Friday 12 September 2025)| London Review of Books
For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.| London Review of Books
To think about Stevens’s life, or Stevens from the perspective of his life, is to be told that your bird of paradise...| London Review of Books
Richard Ellmann saw himself as emulating Joyce: the main job of the biographer was less a matter of ‘observing’ than...| London Review of Books
From the late Middle Ages all the way to Pasolini’s 1971 film, Boccaccio has been best remembered – understandably...| London Review of Books
Europe’s leading magazine of ideas, published twice a month. Book reviews and essays (and much more online) renowned for their fearlessness, range and elegance.| London Review of Books
In the West Papuan regency of Merauke, close to the border with Papua New Guinea, Indonesia is rapidly clearing land in...| LRB Blog
I should state up front that I am not a fan of programme fiction. Basically, I feel about it as towards new fiction from...| London Review of Books
In aerospace, engineering, technology, construction, health and defence, the rush is on to grab as many fat contracts as...| London Review of Books
On entering their cell for the first time, the recludensus (novice recluse) would climb into a grave dug inside the cell...| London Review of Books
The only rule of a tale is that everything gets used, even apparently superfluous details – though you’re allowed...| London Review of Books
When diversity, equity and inclusion become ‘threats’ to the order of society, progressive politics in general is...| London Review of Books
Where amid this turmoil does neoliberalism stand? In emergency conditions it has been forced to take measures –...| London Review of Books
Philosophers may talk about justice or rights, but they don’t often try to reshape the world according to their ideals...| London Review of Books
Gisèle Pelicot doesn’t conceive of her now ex-husband or the other men who raped her as ‘bad apples’, aberrations...| London Review of Books
The political question of moment is why, rather than fundamentally altering the Western view of Israel, the events of...| London Review of Books
My first action on waking is to look at my phone. Press the green WhatsApp icon and hope for two blue ticks. One grey...| LRB Blog
I’m angry. I’m so angry it woke me up this morning. And I’m angry about being angry because I can’t channel the...| LRB Blog
‘I can start with saying it is an unbearable situation in terms of dignity,’ my friend Marwa says in one of the...| LRB Blog
Europe’s leading magazine of ideas, published twice a month. Book reviews and essays (and much more online) renowned for their fearlessness, range and elegance.| LRB Blog
No one should be moved off land as a result of a capitalist onslaught aligned with a settler state, whether they have...| London Review of Books
On 25 April, a large group of students at the University of California, Los Angeles, set up an encampment on the main...| LRB Blog
The next legislative elections in Estonia will be in 2027, and it would be a stretch to gauge the future balance of...| LRB Blog
Our current royal family doesn’t have the difficulties in breeding that pandas do, but pandas and royal persons alike...| London Review of Books
At the turn of the 20th century, the Swiss were plagued by strange, interlinked medical conditions, which existed...| London Review of Books
We are to condemn or approve, and that makes sense, but is that all that is ethically required of us? In fact, I do...| London Review of Books
The inescapable truth is that Israel cannot extinguish Palestinian resistance by violence, any more than the...| London Review of Books
We, the undersigned artists and writers based in the EU, the UK and North America, call on our governments to demand an...| LRB Blog