LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – SEPTEMBER 24, 2026 PREVIEW
Tag Archives: London Review of Books
Fallout: The Inside Story of America’s Failure to Disarm North Korea by Joel S. Wit.
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – SEPTEMBER 10, 2026 PREVIEW
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features…
Good Weird or Bad Weird
By Colin Burrow
Inhabit the Poem: Last Essays by Helen Vendler.
What’s the point of literary criticism? In June the University of Exeter announced plans that might make roughly a third of its English department – one of the best in the country – redundant. Other institutions, including Canterbury Christ Church University, have stopped offering English degrees altogether. Most mainstream publishers now wouldn’t dream of publishing a work of literary criticism, as they happily did in the 1970s and 1980s. Even literary biography, literary criticism’s previously marketable stepsister, no longer brings a gleam to a publisher’s eye. The grassroots of the subject are also suffering badly. Since 2000 the number of people taking A-level English literature in England has dropped by around a third, to around 36,000, with an even higher drop among male students.
A Sicilian Man: Leonardo Sciascia, the Rise of the Mafia and the Struggle for Italy’s Soul by Caroline Moorehead
The Beast in the Clouds: The Roosevelt Brothers’ Deadly Quest to Find the Mythic Giant Panda by Nathalia Holt
The Twitnam Summer: Friendship, Satire and the Writing of ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ by Hester Grant
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – AUGUST 13, 2026 PREVIEW
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features…
An Uncomplicated Man – Emily Wilson
The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan.
Christopher Nolan’s $250 million action movie version of Homer’s ancient Greek poem is an entertaining way to hide from the high temperatures for a few hours. Nolan’s trademark jumps and twists in the narrative structure are relatively easy to follow, and appropriate for The Odyssey, a narrative of tales nested in tales. My teenagers had a good time. Unlike some of Nolan’s other films, The Odyssey is not boring, thanks to the source material, which is impossible to mess up entirely. It’s a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle, like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display – and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth.
Beloved Son Felix: Coming of Age in the Renaissance by Felix Platter, translated by Seán Jennett
The Northern Routes to Kingship: A History of Scandinavia AD 180-550 by Dagfinn Skre
The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief by Richard Holmes
The Future in Our Past: The General Strike, 1926-2026 by Callum Cant and Matthew Lee
The Edge of Revolution: The General Strike that Shook Britain by David Torrance
Nine Days in May: The General Strike of 1926 by Jonathan Schneer
Britain’s Revolutionary Summer: The General Strike of 1926 by Edd Mustill
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – JUNE 25, 2026 PREVIEW
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features…
Collisions: A Physicist’s Journey from Hiroshima to the Death of the Dinosaurs by Alec Nevala-Lee
The First Fascist: The Life and Legacy of the Marquis de Morès by Sergio Luzzatto
Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev by Maxim Gorky, translated by Bryan Karetnyk
The Masquerade: A History of Extravagance and Intrigue by Meghan Kobza
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – MAY 21, 2026 PREVIEW
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.
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – MAY 7, 2026 PREVIEW
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?
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
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
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
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.
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – APRIL 23, 2026 PREVIEW
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
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – APRIL 2, 2026 PREVIEW
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
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – MARCH 19, 2026 PREVIEW
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
Boomers Daily 