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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 11d

Issue 47.18 is now online, featuring:

@erinmaglaque.bsky.social on Pico della Mirandola
Conor Gearty on human rights and the law
Thomas Laqueur on the cello
Jessica Olin on Amanda Knox
Colin Burrow on Muriel Spark
and David Runciman on the road to Brexit.

Read online at www.lrb.co.uk

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 31m

morning mist and cloud
faint on the mountain
a god is moving his face
over the waters a god
in the cleft in the pass up the
ghyll the scramblers make
their way also up –
yesterday || in the beginning
they told a story about glaciers

A poem by Maureen N. McLane: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Maureen N. McLane · Poem: ‘Clearing’

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 1h

‘European integration might have been conceived as a peace project but its evolution can only be understood through the prism of war. And here, too, Britain found itself unable to square the circle of its conflicting desires.’

David Runciman on the road to Brexit: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

David Runciman · Down the Rabbit Hole: Britain’s Europe Problem

From Macmillan to Wilson to Heath to Thatcher to Major to Blair to Cameron, a succession of prime ministers persuaded...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 2h

‘It is peculiar, to say the least, that Israel is being given, in a “peace deal”, land that it has not managed to capture militarily.’

@selmadabbagh.bsky.social on Gaza, from the blog: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/oc...

Selma Dabbagh | Knowledge of the Relevant Facts

Israel has assassinated a record number of Palestinian journalists, refused to allow international reporters to enter...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 2h

‘The number of Cafe Royal titles has passed seven hundred; together they constitute a singular record of British and Irish vernacular photography between about 1960 and 2010.’

Ben Campbell on a collection of his father Peter’s photographs of London in the early sixties
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Ben Campbell · In the Shoebox: Peter’s Snapshots

The snapshots in my father’s book were taken during his first three years in London, after he emigrated from New...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 4h

‘Susan Choi has never stinted on dress, décor and kitchenware, and realism is still her mainstay. In “Flashlight”, however, she’s willing to risk the hard-to-believe.’

Blake Morrison reads Choi’s Booker-shortlisted novel: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Blake Morrison · Reflexive Hostility: Susan Choi’s ‘Flashlight’

It can’t have been hard for Susan Choi to hit on the title of her novel, which has been shortlisted for the Booker...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 5h

‘Asa Briggs used sweeping educational change to increase equality in England. He helped to make history, as well as writing it.’

Neal Ascherson on the social historian: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Neal Ascherson · Professor Heathrow: Asa Briggs says yes

Asa Briggs used sweeping educational change to increase equality in England. He helped to make history, as well as...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 5h

‘New linguistic articulations can reconfigure the way we make sense of our own feelings, thoughts and responses – our internalised self-interpretations.’

Stephen Mulhall on Charles Taylor’s new book: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Stephen Mulhall · Self-Interpreting Animals

New linguistic articulations can reconfigure the way we make sense of our own feelings, thoughts and responses – our...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 6h

‘Should Argentina fail, Uruguay would suffer the equivalent of a hurricane, presenting the coalition government with a serious challenge.’

Forrest Hylton on the blog: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/oc...

Forrest Hylton | Across the Rio de la Plata

At sunset on a clear day you can see thirty miles across the Rio de la Plata from Colonia de Sacramento to the...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 7h

‘The message is clear: 20th-century colonialism created the conditions for a 21st-century tragedy.’

@josephinequinn.bsky.social on an exhibition of Gazan antiquities: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Josephine Quinn · At the Institut du monde arabe: ‘Trésors sauvés de Gaza’

This show has excited controversy: should we even be talking about damage to antiquities in the context of so much...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 7h

‘She's trying to give voice to other people who are wrongfully imprisoned and don't have a platform. So, that's the argument for why she doesn't just shut up – because she's actually doing good work with the notoriety.’

Jessica Olin on Amanda Knox, on the podcast: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

Why should we listen to Amanda Knox?

Podcast Episode · The LRB Podcast · 08/10/2025 · 45m

podcasts.apple.com

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 8h

‘Muriel Spark wanted to be the inventor of the world while knowing that she was its creature, which gave her a good – and perhaps, from the viewpoint of those around her, excessive – supply of the egoism that all writers need.’

Colin Burrow: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Colin Burrow · World-Beating Buster-Upper: Muriel Spark’s Wickedness

The characteristic flavour of Spark’s writing was that of a Catholic ironist, for whom the terrible and the laughable...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 9h

‘Audre Lorde described poetry as “an expression, with love, of some piece of the world in which the poet lives”. But she also made clear that her world was expanding.’

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (@keeanga.bsky.social): www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor · I do not have to be you: Audre Lorde’s Legacy

Lorde never had to persuade her comrades about a strategy, tactic or new idea, lose an argument in order to maintain a...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 10h

‘The pro-appeasement British ambassador, Nevile Henderson, said he was no longer worried by the British press corps: “Except for Ebbutt, who is now gone, they don’t seek to make mischief.”’

Patrick Cockburn on a journalist who saw the Nazi threat coming: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Patrick Cockburn · Diary: Interviewing Hitler

In August 1937, three German journalists were expelled from Britain for suspected espionage. Retaliation was a...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 22h

‘Visually and aurally the movie’s high point is a hectic Puerto Rican Day celebration near the Yankee Stadium, with amazing, uninterrupted music by the late Eddie Palmieri and his band.’

Michael Wood watches Spike Lee’s ‘Highest 2 Lowest’: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Michael Wood · At the Movies: ‘Highest 2 Lowest’

Highest 2 Lowest is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963), which is a loose adaptation of Ed McBain’s...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 23h

‘Markets are less convinced, both of Milei’s performance and of Bessent’s commitment to the bailout. Some are betting the money takes time; and/or that not all of it arrives; and/or that it gets held up, shut down, or blocked by Congress.’

Forrest Hylton on Argentina: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/oc...

Forrest Hylton | Across the Rio de la Plata

At sunset on a clear day you can see thirty miles across the Rio de la Plata from Colonia de Sacramento to the...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 1d

‘Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s prose is stirring if not always convincing. It gives the reader more to think about than the bland defence of neoliberal technocracy by centrist supporters of Macron.’

David Todd: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

David Todd · Parable of the Parakeets: Mélenchon’s Ambitions

Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s rise to prominence since 2015 has often been compared to the contemporaneous if more ephemeral...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 1d

‘All stories of Holocaust survival are in their way absurd: a Jew who is a duly convicted prisoner doesn’t count as a Jew for purposes of murder; Primo Levi survived Auschwitz because someone needed a chemist, and Lasker-Wallfisch because Rosé needed a cellist.’

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Thomas Laqueur · A Different Life: Can cellos remember?

Cellists and violinists in particular are haunted by the musicians who played their instruments before them and those...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 1d

‘In May, when the National Endowment for the Arts withdrew funding from more than 550 organisations in the US, the cuts were described as ‘economic censorship’. There’s nothing new about that, either.’

Anna Aslanyan on libraries, book bans and censorship, from the blog
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/oc...

Anna Aslanyan | The Censor’s Scissors

John Heartfield was forced to leave Germany in 1933. Even before the Nazis put him on their hit list, his art had caused...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 1d

‘Chinese Gen Z-ers don’t want their parents or colleagues to know what they say, watch or read in the virtual world. Plus, cyber violence is rife: who wants to be doxxed over a silly comment?’

Yun Sheng: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Yun Sheng · Short Cuts: China’s Gen Z

A passive-aggressive ‘lying flat’ attitude is easily dismissed as laziness, but Gen Z-ers have developed a...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 1d

László Krasznahorkai has said of his work: ‘You will never go wrong anticipating doom in my books, any more than you’ll go wrong in anticipating doom in ordinary life.’

In 2012, he was in conversation with Colm Tóibín for our Bookshop podcast: www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/podcasts-vid...

László Krasznahorkai in conversation with Colm Tóibín | London Review Bookshop

Our first Literary Friendships event brought together Colm Tóibín with his friend László Krasznahorkai. Described by the Guardian as a ‘visionary writer’,…

www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 1d

‘She hosted a podcast, The Truth about True Crime, in which she tackled the genre’s exploitation of people’s ‘worst moments’ for entertainment. Monica Lewinsky, a fellow survivor of the crucible, became a “big sister” to her.’

Jessica Olin on Amanda Knox: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Jessica Olin · In the Multiverse: What Knox did next

A proud sci-fi and fantasy nerd, Amanda Knox inhabits the multiverse. She ‘fantasises about moving to a remote village...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 1d

‘The chatbot doesn’t not care like a human not caring: it doesn’t care like a rock doesn’t care, or a glass of water. AI doesn’t want anything. But this is bound to change.’

@jamesmeek.bsky.social on the search for Artificial General Intelligence: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

James Meek · Computers that want things

For all the fluency and synthetic friendliness of public-facing AI chatbots like ChatGPT, it seems important to remember...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 1d

‘Domestic judges cannot undo the case law of the Strasbourg court that so irritates a section of the political class and its journalist outriders. But they are doing everything short of that to make human rights as much of a domestic legal irrelevance as possible.’

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Conor Gearty · Unwelcome Remnant: Erasing the Human Rights Act

The Supreme Court is quietly editing the Human Rights Act out of existence. None of this is being done in secret – the...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 1d

‘Does Pico really belong to the Renaissance? Or is our whole idea of the Renaissance hopelessly flimsy, nothing but a collection of fantasies about what it means to be modern and human?’

@erinmaglaque.bsky.social on Pico della Mirandola: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Erin Maglaque · Thishereness: Pico in Purgatory

Pico’s Oration contravenes the very idea of human possibility that we think the Renaissance is about – yet we think...

London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 1d

‘Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, declared that starvation did not exist. According to Unicef, Gaza’s entire child population under five is at risk of acute malnutrition.’

@selmadabbagh.bsky.social on Gaza, from the bloghttps://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/oc...

Selma Dabbagh | Knowledge of the Relevant Facts

Israel has assassinated a record number of Palestinian journalists, refused to allow international reporters to enter...