LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS

MAY 9. 2025

Ferdinand Mount: The Tongue Is a Fire

It’s​ puzzling, unsettling even, to see ‘free speech’ rearing its head in public debate again, rousing passions. ..

APRIL 25. 2025

Andrew O’Hagan: Diary

I had come along in the course of my duties as a hopeless necromantic. I don’t think I have ever believed that pop. ..

Michael Wood: At the Movies

‘Classic’ may not be quite the right word for this scary, messy film – it’s about forms of rage that don’t add. ..

Sarah Resnick: It’s in the eyes

The difficulty of being in contact with ‘the truth about yourself’ is a theme that runs through Ørstavik’s work. ...

Hannah Rose Woods: Tactile Dreams

The British aversion to touching wasn’t limited to the Victorian era: comparative studies confirm that we continue to. ..

Robert Cioffi: In Gold and Lapis Lazuli

The pyramids are so central to the modern view of Egypt, and to Egyptian tourism, that it is hard not to speak about. ..

James Butler: Short Cuts

Francis’s continual emphasis on mercy – ‘the first attribute of God’ – explains his papal choices more clearly. ..

Tom Shippey: Unfortunate Ecgfrith

The West Saxons may have promoted their version of the national story more successfully than the Mercians, but it is. ..

Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite: It’s a shitshow

Tim Lankester, Thatcher’s private secretary for economic affairs for the first two and a half years of her tenure, ...

Stephen Sedley: Not Terminal

Why should a terminal diagnosis matter? It matters because Kim Leadbeater’s bill currently before Parliament will. ..

Lucie Elven: Wouldn’t you like to be normal?

There were her nicknames: Nini with the nits at home as a child, Miss Educated in Seacliff psychiatric hospital, Waldo. ..

Jack Shenker: Renters v. Rentiers

Housing injustice, unlike most of the social ills afflicting our atomised society, has the potential to unite and. ..

Emily LaBarge: At the Barbican

Noah Davis’s work is distinguished by a revelry and a commitment to the figures he brings into his image world. There. ..

Michael Ledger-Lomas: Hairy Teutons

William Morris wrote with appalling fluency. Composing verse on trains or while sat at the loom, he could turn out a. ..