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LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – MAY 21, 2026 PREVIEW

May 14, 2026 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features…

Lead Essays & Politics

“America’s Afghanistan Delusion” by Tom Stevenson: Stevenson examines the legacy of the War on Terror, arguing that the 2021 withdrawal from Kabul was viewed by the Western establishment as a “mistake” or “cautionary tale” rather than the “crime” he suggests it was. He traces the expansion of American power through “black sites” and military advisers across the globe.
“Short Cuts: Labour’s Failure” by James Butler: Butler analyzes the results of the English local elections (held on May 7). He criticizes Keir Starmer’s leadership style as “all injunction and no argument” and explores why national revulsion toward the Labour Party overshadowed local government issues.
“Where’s All the Cash?” by John Lanchester: A characteristically lucid investigation into modern economics, focusing on the circulation of physical currency and the shifting nature of wealth in a digital-first economy.

Literature & History

“On Marlen Haushofer” by Becca Rothfeld: A deep dive into the work of the Austrian writer, specifically her 1963 masterpiece The Wall. Rothfeld explores Haushofer’s recurring themes of entrapment and isolation, noting the paradoxical “joy” found in her most barricaded characters.
“Baltic Snake Cults” by Diarmaid MacCulloch: The eminent historian reviews the long survival of paganism and “serpent worship” in the Baltic regions, challenging the standard narrative of a monolithic Christian Europe during the Middle Ages.
“Should We Punish?” by Thomas Nagel: The philosopher engages with the ethics of the penal system, weighing the traditional justifications for punishment against contemporary moral and legal theories.

Other Features

“The Clearance of Aoineadh Mòr, 1824” by Tarn MacArthur: A historical account of the Highland Clearances, specifically focusing on the displacement of communities in Scotland.

At the Movies: Michael Wood provides his regular column of film criticism, likely focusing on current European or art-house releases.

Poetry & Correspondence: The issue also contains poems and a robust letters section, which in this period has been heavily occupied by debates over the Arctic (following Laleh Khalili’s piece in the previous issue) and the fallout of the UK local elections.

Arts & Literature, Books, Magazines, Opinion, Reviews

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – MAY 7, 2026 PREVIEW

April 29, 2026 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features ‘Who Owns The Arctic?’ by Laleh Khalili; De Kooning in Cuba by T.J. Clark; Politics on Speed by William Davies…

Who owns the Arctic?

Laleh Khalili

From the 16th century onwards, as European powers feverishly colonised the world, the possibility of a Northern Sea Route connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Scandinavia to the Bering Strait, tantalised the Dutch and the British as an alternative to the southern routes to Asia and the Americas, which were dominated by Portugal and Spain. But the route only became a reality in the Soviet era, after investments in scientific, economic, industrial and military infrastructure in Siberia.

Politics on Speed

William Davies

This is what distinguishes hyperpolitics from the mass democracy of the mid-20th century. Symbolic political gestures are now commonplace, but paid membership of organisations and parties has plummeted. The left has failed to find a replacement for trade unions as a basis for collective action in civil society. Political movements are easy to join, and just as easy to leave.

De Kooning in Cuba

T.J. Clark

De Kooning’s Suburb in Havana is a counter-revolutionary painting. Well, of course. It is counter-revolutionary because it is counter everything, versus everything, lost in suburbia. It wants to show us how hard it had to work to get precisely nowhere. Why nowhere was where it wished to get to is a question it leaves to the viewer.

Orbán’s Fall

Jan-Werner Müller

Can there be poetic justice in politics? Perhaps once in a lifetime. In 1989, a young Viktor Orbán bravely told the crowds in Budapest’s Heroes’ Square that it was time for the Russians to go home, just as protesters had demanded in 1956; almost four decades later, he was heckled on the campaign trail with the same words.

Arts & Literature, Books, Magazines, Opinion, Reviews

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – APRIL 23, 2026 PREVIEW

April 15, 2026 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features…

At the National Gallery: Holbein and Henry James

The Language Puzzle: How We Talked Our Way out of the Stone Age by Steven Mithen

Surf’s Up: Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys by Peter Doggett

Kingmaker: Pamela Churchill Harriman’s Astonishing Life of Seduction, Intrigue and Power by Sonia Purnell

Indira Gandhi and the Years that Transformed India by Srinath Raghavan

Arts & Literature, Books, Magazines, Opinion, Reviews

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – APRIL 2, 2026 PREVIEW

March 25, 2026 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Contents · Vol. 48 No. 6 · 02 April 2026

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features ‘Patricia Lockwood on Willa Cather, Tom Johnson on early modern work, various political analyses, reviews, poetry, and a diary entry on Serbian student movements.

The Bright Edges of the World: Willa Cather and Her Archbishop by Garrett Peck

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

The Experience of Work in Early Modern England by Jane Whittle, Mark Hailwood, Hannah Robb and Taylor Aucoin

Caillebotte: Painting Is a Serious Game by Amaury ChardeauGustave Caillebotte: Painting Men edited by Scott Allan, Gloria Groom and Paul Perrin

Arts & Literature, Books, Magazines, Opinion, Reviews

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – MARCH 19, 2026 PREVIEW

March 10, 2026 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features Nicholas Spice – Schubert’s Imagination; Daniella Shreir on Chantal Akerman; Tom Stevenson – Death of an Ayatollah; Joanna Biggs – Solvej Balle’s Time Loop….

Iran, Week One

The attack launched on Iran by the US and Israel on 28 February was a textbook case of international aggression, justified in only the most cursory fashion by fictional Iranian threats and undertaken with no clear aims and no clear demands or terms. In announcing the war Donald Trump described it as a wholesale attack on both government and state. The US and Israel would ‘raze their missile industry to the ground’ and ‘annihilate their navy’. Benjamin Netanyahu called on Iranians to ‘come out to the streets and finish the job’. By Tom Stevenson

Mummy’s Favourite

The late queen can be held responsible for much, but nobody could accuse her of seeming to enjoy her role. For the Yorks, however, enjoyment was everything, and the notion of royal sacrifice, arguably a red herring in the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, was finally obliterated by their actions. By Andrew O’Hagan

Marlowe’s Betrayals

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. By Michael Dobson

Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York by Andrew Lownie

Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice by Virginia Roberts Giuffre

Andrew O’Hagan

Arts & Literature, Books, Magazines, Opinion, Reviews

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – MARCH 5, 2026 PREVIEW

February 23, 2026 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features Jackson Lears – Brzezinski’s Cold War; Marlowe’s Betrayals; Alexander Bevilacqua visits Noah’s Ark; Caravaggio’s Clothes and more.

Lee Gillette, Neil Blackshaw, Ed Jesudason, Samuel Freeman, David Foglesong, Jim Holt, Michael Neill, Malcolm Parry

James Butler‘Need a lord on the board?’

Arts & Literature, Books, Magazines, Opinion, Reviews

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – FEBRUARY 19, 2026 PREVIEW

February 9, 2026 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features Seamus Perry: Pluralism and Poetry; James Wolcott: Updike Reconsidered; James Meek on Romania’s Far Right;

Seamus Perry · Pluralism and the Modern Poet: Pluralism and Poetry

‘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.

Jonathan Rée – Kojève v. Hegel

Alexandre Kojève described his book on Hegel as ‘very bad’, and he had a point. His take on The Phenomenology of Spirit is not only misleading but slapdash, dogmatic, frivolous and flamboyant. The characters he filled it with, from the Master and Slave to the Sensualist and the Sage, sound rather like Mr Worldly Wiseman, Madam Bubble and Mr Sagacity in Pilgrim’s Progress.