London Review of Books
@lrb.co.uk
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For the new issue of the @lrb.co.uk I read J.D. Vance's tremendously unpleasant memoir of his conversion, which is at once an evasion of moral responsibility and a pre-2028 argument for a generic Christian nationalism. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
James Butler · Short Cuts: J.D. Vance’s Conversion
The most obvious question is not whether J.D. Vance believes what he claims to believe, but why, if he believes it, he...
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On the podcast: ideology, critical technologies, supply chains and control of energy flows – how will these geopolitical dynamics play out? Listen to @adamtooze.bsky.social’s New York Autumn Lecture on ‘Electrostates, Petrostates and the New Cold War’. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...
Adam Tooze: Electrostates, Petrostates and the New Cold War
Podcast Episode · The LRB Podcast · 5 August · 1hr 15min
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I wrote a thing about Virginia Woolf, and being a shonky printer, and making imperfect books that are really about playing with the people you love. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Dennis Duncan · At Charleston: Hogarth Press
There is something magnetic about the large case containing all 34 titles that Virginia Woolf made. With their marbled,...
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looks like my poem “The World” just baaarely snuck into the emily wilson/odyssey issue lmao
Patricia Lockwood · Poem: ‘The World’
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"Manchester’s recent headline successes are well known – the highest growth of any sub-region outside London, surging employment in sectors such as technology, and a hugely improved public transport system – as are the failures, particularly in housing."
Harry Stopes | Manchesterisms
Bev Craig, leader of Manchester City Council before she was comfortably elected last week to replace Andy Burnham as...
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I've written about Neets for the LRB. It is odd listening to recent debates about this completely ignore the overwhelming fact of this current crisis, that it is one of inactivity, disability, mental ill-health and neurodevelopmental disorders (as I discuss) www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
William Davies · Young People Are Different: What do Neets need?
The majority of Neets are not looking for work, but living outside of the labour market and the education system,...
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Issue 48.14/15 is now online, featuring: @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social on Nolan’s 𝘖𝘥𝘺𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘺 T.J. Clark on the Chauvet cave paintings Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite on the general strike of 1926 @will-davies.bsky.social on Neets and Alan Hollinghurst on Ronald Firbank. Read online now at www.lrb.co.uk
‘In the world’s richest societies, it is no longer the case that age correlates to a lack of resources. Instead there are vast pools of assets held by older citizens, particularly in the form of property, private pensions and other retirement funds.’ David Runciman: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
David Runciman · The Cult of Longevity
We don’t have a politics of what works so much as a politics of what older citizens won’t notice. All human beings...
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‘There are more female characters than in most Nolan movies, thanks to the source material. But none of them has much to say, in contrast to the characterisations in the poem.’ @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social on Christopher Nolan’s 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘖𝘥𝘺𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘺. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Emily Wilson · An Uncomplicated Man
As they say at the awards shows, I was humbled to learn that Christopher Nolan has read at least the first line of my...
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‘The stakes are clear: the further individuation of the poet (a person coming to be herself and know herself through the practice of poetry) and the indispensability of the lyric as a way we, as a species, come to be and know ourselves.’ Ange Mlinko on Susan Stewart. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Ange Mlinko · On Susan Stewart
For Stewart, this is what poetic process is: the closely observed emergence of empirical knowledge out of chaos,...
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‘The “incredible iridescence” of American feathered headdresses, artworks, shields and wall hangings attracted Jacobean collectors too. In early modern England, “people were surrounded by feathers all the time”.’ Clare Jackson on American influence on English life. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Clare Jackson · Jaguars over the Seine: Early Modern Americana
The ‘incredible iridescence’ of American feathered headdresses, artworks, shields and wall hangings attracted...
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‘Zurbarán has always seemed to me an engaging but second division painter. Seeing many of his paintings across all the genres together, I realised I was wrong. They are mesmerising.’ Nicola Jennings at the National Gallery. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Nicola Jennings · At the National Gallery: Zurbarán in Seville
Zurbarán has always seemed to me an engaging but second division painter. Seeing many of his paintings across all the...
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‘Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s new and self-created version of the modernist sentence mixes Scots and English to resemble “a meandering, live thought-process”, as Ali Smith puts it: “poetic and realist and soaring and dark and local and strange all at once”.’ Jenny Turner: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Jenny Turner · Hated and Loved in a Breath: On Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Gibbon’s new and self-created version of the modernist sentence mixes Scots and English to resemble ‘a meandering,...
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‘Law is not the only element in determining citizenship: the actions of those who interpret or challenge the law are just as important.’ @kabcommons.bsky.social on England’s birthright citizenship. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Kathleen Commons · Short Cuts: England’s Birthright Citizenship
It was relatively straightforward for the British government to end birthright subjecthood: statute overrides common law...
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‘A wildly unrealistic Welsh recipe collection from around 1400 identified saffron, one of the most expensive spices, as a way “to be happy always” but warned against eating too much of it, lest “you die of happiness”.’ Barbara Newman on medieval wellness. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Barbara Newman · Beasts with Ravening Whelps: Helthe and Welthe
Self-Help from the Middle Ages raises some provocative questions about historical figures. Was Thomas Aquinas truly a...
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‘The extraterrestrial has become an ideological question rather than a creature. It means freedom to know what there is to know, and what has been repressed for far too long.’ Michael Wood watches 𝘋𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘋𝘢𝘺. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Michael Wood · At the Movies: ‘Disclosure Day’
Steven Spielberg uses the extraterrestrial as a stand-in for almost anything strange. It’s not always a virtue, but...
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‘By the time Chauvet was painted the figure-field dialogue, and its power as an organiser of possible worlds, had clearly been the subject of long theory and practice. These are sophisticated performances.’ T.J. Clark on the Chauvet cave paintings, new online. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
T.J. Clark · Night Visitors: What I saw in the cave
The world exceeds us. It comes to us out of darkness. The cave is the universe, the nightly presence of that unknown...
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‘The scores for both 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘔𝘢𝘯 and 𝘝𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘨𝘰 are the work of a composer who recognises that his task is to seek out the essence of the material on screen and to express that rather than himself.’ @jonathancoe.bsky.social on Hitchcock’s composer Bernard Herrmann. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Jonathan Coe · Where was the drum kit? Hitchcock’s Music
The music Bernard Herrmann wrote for The Wrong Man is diffident, sometimes almost unnoticeable. His score for Hitchcock...
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Loved this LRB piece about screwball comedies, which really captures what is so amazing about the genre:
Ruby Hamilton · At the Movies: Screwball Comedies
Screwballs aren’t miserabilist-humanist comedies about learning to revel in imperfection; they’re comedies of...
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‘If 𝘙𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘰 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘑𝘶𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘵 is the greatest play about love, I would say ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ is the greatest poem about love and about how lovers are transfigured by their shared experience.’ Mark Ford on our Close Readings subscription podcast. Listen to an extract: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/c...
Narrative Poems: ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ by John Keats
Podcast Episode · Close Readings · 3 August · 1hr 10min
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so how’s it going with the Parkinson’s? you say and I start to say every moment bleeding to death around me but the therapist cautioned me yesterday don’t say dread call it discomfort you’re not in danger you’re uncomfortable ‘Smile’, a poem by Anne Carson. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Anne Carson · Poem: ‘Smile’
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Hollywood seems to be stuck on this idea: the bad thing about war is that the men we send off to do the wars come back all sad. There’s so much rich cinema about war, but usually from countries that have wars happen IN them.
London Review of Books@lrb.co.uk · yesterday‘The representation of Odysseus as a reluctant warlord makes a nonsense of the movie’s imagined world. We are not shown that war or killing are bad, only that good men sometimes feel bad about it – a very different point.’ Emily Wilson on Christopher Nolan’s film. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘In accepting Catholic authority, writers unleashed their imaginations. As Graham Greene said, quoting Saki, “When once you have taken the Impossible into your calculations, its possibilities become practically limitless.”’ @michaelledgerlomas.bsky.social on converts. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Michael Ledger-Lomas · Pattern in the Carpet: Novel Catholics
In accepting Catholic authority, writers unleashed their imaginations. As Graham Greene said, quoting Saki, ‘When once...
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‘Bev Craig has promised to build fifty thousand affordable homes over the next thirteen years. This would be a doubling of the rate at which they were built between 2016 and 2023.’ @harrystopes.bsky.social on Mancehester’s rentier economy, from the blog. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/au...
Harry Stopes | Manchesterisms
Bev Craig, leader of Manchester City Council before she was comfortably elected last week to replace Andy Burnham as...
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‘The representation of Odysseus as a reluctant warlord makes a nonsense of the movie’s imagined world. We are not shown that war or killing are bad, only that good men sometimes feel bad about it – a very different point.’ Emily Wilson on Christopher Nolan’s film. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Emily Wilson · An Uncomplicated Man
As they say at the awards shows, I was humbled to learn that Christopher Nolan has read at least the first line of my...
lrb.co.uk
‘Marat swapped dense political analysis for a style that practically shouted at his readers; he vowed to keep them “constantly alert”, to prevent them from “falling back into the abyss”.’ Oliver Cussen on the journalist and revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Oliver Cussen · Doctor of the Incurable: Marat Unmade
Beyond the violence and immediacy of his language, perhaps Jean-Paul Marat was popular for a more straightforward reason...
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‘Perhaps the most precious aspect of the caves is that they preserve a picture in which hierarchy and human-centredness don’t look to have been the organising assumptions.’ T.J. Clark on the Chauvet cave paintings, published online early from our summer issue. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
T.J. Clark · Night Visitors: What I saw in the cave
The world exceeds us. It comes to us out of darkness. The cave is the universe, the nightly presence of that unknown...
lrb.co.uk
‘I think this is a genuinely radical book; I think what Eliot is doing in it is analogous – the closest thing I can think is what David Lynch does with 𝘛𝘸𝘪𝘯 𝘗𝘦𝘢𝘬𝘴.’ Tom McCarthy on 𝘔𝘪𝘥𝘥𝘭𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩, on our Close Readings subscription podcast. Listen to an extract: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/c...
The Man Behind the Curtain: ‘Middlemarch’ by George Eliot
Podcast Episode · Close Readings · 2 August · 1hr 38min
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‘Intrepid sea-going women dressed as men and uncloaked themselves only after they had already established their authority as seafarers and fighters. Some were discovered during flogging.’ @lalehkhalili.bsky.social on women at sea, past and present. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Laleh Khalili · Canton Kitty: Seafaring
Seafaring is a bundle of contradictions. It is highly skilled labour, yet mostly invisible. Lower ratings of seafarers...
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