London Review of Books
@lrb.co.uk
Critical thinking, published every fortnight.
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Subscribe: https://mylrb.co.uk/TWQU0725
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Issue 48.01 is now online, featuring:
@tomstevenson.bsky.social on Xi Jinping
David Runciman on Kamala Harris’s memoir
Colm Tóibín on Yeats, Auden and Eliot
Chal Ravens on Britney Spears
Tony Wood on Trump’s invasion of Venezuela
and a cover by Jon McNaught.
Read online at www.lrb.co.uk
@tomstevenson.bsky.social on Xi Jinping
David Runciman on Kamala Harris’s memoir
Colm Tóibín on Yeats, Auden and Eliot
Chal Ravens on Britney Spears
Tony Wood on Trump’s invasion of Venezuela
and a cover by Jon McNaught.
Read online at www.lrb.co.uk
‘Each scene of the predella is a discrete miniature world, a carefully wrought space alive with drama and anecdotal detail, while the series as a whole is bound by a quiet coherence of scale, colour and light.’
Anna McGee at the Fra Angelico exhibition in Florence.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Anna McGee at the Fra Angelico exhibition in Florence.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Anna McGee · At the Palazzo Strozzi: On Fra Angelico
Faced with a parade of flushed Madonnas and anguished Christs, it would be easy to think that Fra Angelico was somehow...
www.lrb.co.uk
January 20, 2026 at 6:15 PM
‘Each scene of the predella is a discrete miniature world, a carefully wrought space alive with drama and anecdotal detail, while the series as a whole is bound by a quiet coherence of scale, colour and light.’
Anna McGee at the Fra Angelico exhibition in Florence.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Anna McGee at the Fra Angelico exhibition in Florence.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Adam Tooze gave the inaugural 𝘓𝘙𝘉 Autumn Lecture, ‘Electrostates, Petrostates and the New Cold War’, at the New School in New York City on 27 October 2025.
Watch the lecture in full here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLnx...
Watch the lecture in full here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLnx...
Adam Tooze: Electrostates, Petrostates and the New Cold War
YouTube video by London Review of Books (LRB)
www.youtube.com
January 20, 2026 at 5:39 PM
Adam Tooze gave the inaugural 𝘓𝘙𝘉 Autumn Lecture, ‘Electrostates, Petrostates and the New Cold War’, at the New School in New York City on 27 October 2025.
Watch the lecture in full here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLnx...
Watch the lecture in full here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLnx...
‘If hopeful pessimism requires that we self-identify as activists, that we act as moral exemplars with “the courage to be where the crisis is”, I’m not sure that it can provide a sound basis for the politics of the future.’
@geoffmann.bsky.social on the end times.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
@geoffmann.bsky.social on the end times.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Geoff Mann · Good Failures: With a Whimper
Does anything matter if we’re done for? We are not the first to wonder. Contemporary fictions are preoccupied with...
www.lrb.co.uk
January 20, 2026 at 5:10 PM
‘If hopeful pessimism requires that we self-identify as activists, that we act as moral exemplars with “the courage to be where the crisis is”, I’m not sure that it can provide a sound basis for the politics of the future.’
@geoffmann.bsky.social on the end times.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
@geoffmann.bsky.social on the end times.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Was Jane Austen gay? The 𝘓𝘙𝘉 and the City of London Sinfonia join forces to pose the question nobody thought to ask during Jane Austen’s 250th anniversary year, on Sunday 1 February at the Actors’ Church in Covent Garden.
More details and tickets: actorschurch.org/whatson/was-...
More details and tickets: actorschurch.org/whatson/was-...
January 20, 2026 at 4:37 PM
Was Jane Austen gay? The 𝘓𝘙𝘉 and the City of London Sinfonia join forces to pose the question nobody thought to ask during Jane Austen’s 250th anniversary year, on Sunday 1 February at the Actors’ Church in Covent Garden.
More details and tickets: actorschurch.org/whatson/was-...
More details and tickets: actorschurch.org/whatson/was-...
‘Georges La Tour flattens time, just as he flattens space. The candles illuminating his repentant Magdalene and indeed his own repentant Peter look never to gutter. Action and change are precluded.’
Julian Bell at the Musée Jacquemart-André.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Julian Bell at the Musée Jacquemart-André.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Julian Bell · At the Musée Jacquemart-André: On Georges de La Tour
Georges de La Tour’s scan of the visual field is a stark, bold testing out of basic facets of experience. What is it...
www.lrb.co.uk
January 20, 2026 at 3:30 PM
‘Georges La Tour flattens time, just as he flattens space. The candles illuminating his repentant Magdalene and indeed his own repentant Peter look never to gutter. Action and change are precluded.’
Julian Bell at the Musée Jacquemart-André.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Julian Bell at the Musée Jacquemart-André.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘Throughout “Saraswati” British imperialism is presented indirectly, not exonerated but depersonalised, as if it was only a spell of bad weather that lasted a few hundred years.’
Adam Mars Jones reads Gurnaik Johal’s new novel.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Adam Mars Jones reads Gurnaik Johal’s new novel.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Adam Mars-Jones · ‘I’m not a radical, Dad’: Gurnaik Johal’s ‘Saraswati’
More than one variety of omniscience is on show in Saraswati. What is referred to as an omniscient narrator is usually...
www.lrb.co.uk
January 20, 2026 at 2:16 PM
‘Throughout “Saraswati” British imperialism is presented indirectly, not exonerated but depersonalised, as if it was only a spell of bad weather that lasted a few hundred years.’
Adam Mars Jones reads Gurnaik Johal’s new novel.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Adam Mars Jones reads Gurnaik Johal’s new novel.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘Kamala Harris is a creature of a system that too many Americans have come to mistrust.’
David Runciman reads Harris’s ‘excruciating’ campaign memoir.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
David Runciman reads Harris’s ‘excruciating’ campaign memoir.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
David Runciman · Calling Dr Jekyll: What Kamala Harris got wrong
Normally, being revealed as a hypocrite is kryptonite for a politician running for office. But Harris doesn’t know...
www.lrb.co.uk
January 20, 2026 at 1:30 PM
‘Kamala Harris is a creature of a system that too many Americans have come to mistrust.’
David Runciman reads Harris’s ‘excruciating’ campaign memoir.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
David Runciman reads Harris’s ‘excruciating’ campaign memoir.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘Femininity is a costume Britney always wore awkwardly. She was a basketball player, not a cheerleader; a self-professed tomboy; goofy rather than graceful.’
Chal Ravens on #FreeBritney.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Chal Ravens on #FreeBritney.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Chal Ravens · It’s. Not. Real.: Britney fights back
Britney’s career began with the plausible deniability of her schoolgirl sex appeal and stalled with the refusal of her...
www.lrb.co.uk
January 20, 2026 at 12:50 PM
‘Femininity is a costume Britney always wore awkwardly. She was a basketball player, not a cheerleader; a self-professed tomboy; goofy rather than graceful.’
Chal Ravens on #FreeBritney.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Chal Ravens on #FreeBritney.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘Test pieces are often indistinguishable, since they all offer the same challenges: fast rhythms, high notes, hard to tune chords, odd time signatures and tricky melodies.’
Rachel Armitage on the competitive brass band scene.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Rachel Armitage on the competitive brass band scene.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Rachel Armitage · Diary: Brass Bands
Many brass bands were started by factory owners in the belief that music would give their workers purpose, strengthen...
www.lrb.co.uk
January 20, 2026 at 12:13 PM
‘Test pieces are often indistinguishable, since they all offer the same challenges: fast rhythms, high notes, hard to tune chords, odd time signatures and tricky melodies.’
Rachel Armitage on the competitive brass band scene.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Rachel Armitage on the competitive brass band scene.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Reposted by London Review of Books
January 20, 2026 at 9:54 AM
‘These works are activated by their context, literally in some cases: several scenes are set in spaces that look like the convent itself, with its restrained classical style and plain stuccoed surfaces.’
Anna McGee visits the Fra Angelico exhibition in Florence.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Anna McGee visits the Fra Angelico exhibition in Florence.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Anna McGee · At the Palazzo Strozzi: On Fra Angelico
Faced with a parade of flushed Madonnas and anguished Christs, it would be easy to think that Fra Angelico was somehow...
www.lrb.co.uk
January 20, 2026 at 11:20 AM
‘These works are activated by their context, literally in some cases: several scenes are set in spaces that look like the convent itself, with its restrained classical style and plain stuccoed surfaces.’
Anna McGee visits the Fra Angelico exhibition in Florence.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Anna McGee visits the Fra Angelico exhibition in Florence.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Reposted by London Review of Books
I always learn from watching @adamtooze.bsky.social but I think he's right when he says in the Q&A that climate/energy is a "nerd's" dream topic. It presupposes rational government—one reason it can feel like a limited lens for understanding the present. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLnx...
Adam Tooze: Electrostates, Petrostates and the New Cold War
YouTube video by London Review of Books (LRB)
www.youtube.com
January 18, 2026 at 7:12 PM
I always learn from watching @adamtooze.bsky.social but I think he's right when he says in the Q&A that climate/energy is a "nerd's" dream topic. It presupposes rational government—one reason it can feel like a limited lens for understanding the present. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLnx...
‘Rivalries between neighbouring great families were a fact of life. It was the king’s job to sort them out and if necessary to impose a settlement.’
Chris Given-Wilson on what really caused the Wars of the Roses.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Chris Given-Wilson on what really caused the Wars of the Roses.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Chris Given-Wilson · All the flowers shall bow: Wars of the Roses
Given that the most widely accepted date for the start of the Wars of the Roses is 1455, it is unsurprising that the...
www.lrb.co.uk
January 20, 2026 at 10:30 AM
‘Rivalries between neighbouring great families were a fact of life. It was the king’s job to sort them out and if necessary to impose a settlement.’
Chris Given-Wilson on what really caused the Wars of the Roses.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Chris Given-Wilson on what really caused the Wars of the Roses.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘Cicero faced his end with the gravity and self-possession that often eluded him in less mortal crises. The barbarity of Antony’s vengeance did less to guarantee Cicero’s immortality than his extraordinary writings.’
Michael Kulikowski on a new Life of Cicero.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Michael Kulikowski on a new Life of Cicero.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Michael Kulikowski · New Man on the Make: Cicero’s Gambles
Trying to psychoanalyse historical figures is rarely productive, but Cicero was a type we can all recognise. He had a...
www.lrb.co.uk
January 20, 2026 at 9:15 AM
‘Cicero faced his end with the gravity and self-possession that often eluded him in less mortal crises. The barbarity of Antony’s vengeance did less to guarantee Cicero’s immortality than his extraordinary writings.’
Michael Kulikowski on a new Life of Cicero.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Michael Kulikowski on a new Life of Cicero.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘Writing shakily about England’s putative glory did not encourage Auden. His mad evocation of England hurt him into exile.’
Colm Tóibín on Yeats, Eliot and Auden.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Colm Tóibín on Yeats, Eliot and Auden.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Colm Tóibín · Yeats, Auden, Eliot: 1939, 1940, 1941
Who was English; who was American? If Auden was English, was T.S. Eliot American? Or was it the other way around?...
www.lrb.co.uk
January 19, 2026 at 8:30 PM
‘Writing shakily about England’s putative glory did not encourage Auden. His mad evocation of England hurt him into exile.’
Colm Tóibín on Yeats, Eliot and Auden.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Colm Tóibín on Yeats, Eliot and Auden.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘In his first two years in power, Xi purged seven hundred top officials, including Hu’s former chief of staff, Ling Jihua. In his first five years he had two million party members put under investigation for corruption.’
@tomstevenson.bsky.social on Xi Jinping.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
@tomstevenson.bsky.social on Xi Jinping.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Tom Stevenson · Climbing the Ziggurat: Xi Jinping’s Inheritance
China, which in the post-Cold War period was viewed as either lunch for American capital or an irredeemable dungeon, has...
www.lrb.co.uk
January 19, 2026 at 7:20 PM
‘In his first two years in power, Xi purged seven hundred top officials, including Hu’s former chief of staff, Ling Jihua. In his first five years he had two million party members put under investigation for corruption.’
@tomstevenson.bsky.social on Xi Jinping.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
@tomstevenson.bsky.social on Xi Jinping.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘I need to mention the music by Daniel Lopatin, which haunts the whole film, especially the games, and feels more like a parallel opera than a soundtrack, an aural story of victory, suspense, defeat and romance.’
Michael Wood watches ‘Marty Supreme’.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Michael Wood watches ‘Marty Supreme’.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Michael Wood · At the Movies: ‘Marty Supreme’
Most of the characters in Marty Supreme believe their lives are a kind of movie, and when a character speaks of ‘...
www.lrb.co.uk
January 19, 2026 at 6:30 PM
‘I need to mention the music by Daniel Lopatin, which haunts the whole film, especially the games, and feels more like a parallel opera than a soundtrack, an aural story of victory, suspense, defeat and romance.’
Michael Wood watches ‘Marty Supreme’.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Michael Wood watches ‘Marty Supreme’.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘If celebrity no longer sells, perhaps the cognac industry could fall back on an old marketing ploy: claiming it’s medicine. In 1918, the Daily Mirror ran the headline “Brandy for Influenza”.’
Naa Oyo A. Kwate on attempts to reverse cognac’s declining sales.
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ja...
Naa Oyo A. Kwate on attempts to reverse cognac’s declining sales.
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ja...
Naa Oyo A. Kwate | Reviving Cognac
Cognac sales have been in decline since 2022, particularly in its two biggest markets, the United States and China. The...
www.lrb.co.uk
January 19, 2026 at 5:52 PM
‘If celebrity no longer sells, perhaps the cognac industry could fall back on an old marketing ploy: claiming it’s medicine. In 1918, the Daily Mirror ran the headline “Brandy for Influenza”.’
Naa Oyo A. Kwate on attempts to reverse cognac’s declining sales.
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ja...
Naa Oyo A. Kwate on attempts to reverse cognac’s declining sales.
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ja...
‘Buckley increasingly lived off the fumes of his celebrity. He was at ease trading barbs with Woody Allen, and his high camp theatrics were compared to Andy Warhol’s by Hugh Kenner, a National Review colleague.’
Thomas Meaney on William F. Buckley.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Thomas Meaney on William F. Buckley.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Thomas Meaney · I’d smash you in the face: MAGA’s Debt to Buckley
Anti-communist dandy, scourge of Ivy League administrators, magazine chieftain, amanuensis to Joe McCarthy, father-...
www.lrb.co.uk
January 19, 2026 at 5:10 PM
‘Buckley increasingly lived off the fumes of his celebrity. He was at ease trading barbs with Woody Allen, and his high camp theatrics were compared to Andy Warhol’s by Hugh Kenner, a National Review colleague.’
Thomas Meaney on William F. Buckley.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Thomas Meaney on William F. Buckley.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
The LRB: thinking for people who don’t like being told what to think.
Our January sale ends soon – just £6 for 6 issues, plus a free tote bag.
Susbscribe here:
mylrb.co.uk/BSUFS126
Our January sale ends soon – just £6 for 6 issues, plus a free tote bag.
Susbscribe here:
mylrb.co.uk/BSUFS126
January 19, 2026 at 4:20 PM
The LRB: thinking for people who don’t like being told what to think.
Our January sale ends soon – just £6 for 6 issues, plus a free tote bag.
Susbscribe here:
mylrb.co.uk/BSUFS126
Our January sale ends soon – just £6 for 6 issues, plus a free tote bag.
Susbscribe here:
mylrb.co.uk/BSUFS126
‘While there has rarely been an exact correspondence between the interests of US capitalist firms and the actions of the US government, that connection has become increasingly arbitrary under Trump.’
Tony Wood on Venezuela.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Tony Wood on Venezuela.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Tony Wood · Short Cuts: On Venezuela
The choice of narco-trafficking as the pretext is partly motivated by a desire to skirt even the feeble murmurs that...
www.lrb.co.uk
January 19, 2026 at 3:30 PM
‘While there has rarely been an exact correspondence between the interests of US capitalist firms and the actions of the US government, that connection has become increasingly arbitrary under Trump.’
Tony Wood on Venezuela.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Tony Wood on Venezuela.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘She could no longer embody all the contradictions contained in her public persona: sexy but pure, radiant but accessible, mature enough but barely legal.’
Chal Ravens on the trials of Britney Spears.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Chal Ravens on the trials of Britney Spears.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Chal Ravens · It’s. Not. Real.: Britney fights back
Britney’s career began with the plausible deniability of her schoolgirl sex appeal and stalled with the refusal of her...
www.lrb.co.uk
January 19, 2026 at 2:15 PM
‘She could no longer embody all the contradictions contained in her public persona: sexy but pure, radiant but accessible, mature enough but barely legal.’
Chal Ravens on the trials of Britney Spears.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Chal Ravens on the trials of Britney Spears.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
In the years of dark listening
to what lay between the seen and the said
I might catch a true thought
just as her mind forced it so far down
that it passed through the floor of herself
and into a black chamber.
From ‘Oubliette’, one of two poems by Lavinia Greenlaw.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
to what lay between the seen and the said
I might catch a true thought
just as her mind forced it so far down
that it passed through the floor of herself
and into a black chamber.
From ‘Oubliette’, one of two poems by Lavinia Greenlaw.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Lavinia Greenlaw · Two Poems
www.lrb.co.uk
January 19, 2026 at 1:30 PM
In the years of dark listening
to what lay between the seen and the said
I might catch a true thought
just as her mind forced it so far down
that it passed through the floor of herself
and into a black chamber.
From ‘Oubliette’, one of two poems by Lavinia Greenlaw.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
to what lay between the seen and the said
I might catch a true thought
just as her mind forced it so far down
that it passed through the floor of herself
and into a black chamber.
From ‘Oubliette’, one of two poems by Lavinia Greenlaw.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘In the 1820s, bands included a range of novel instruments, such as the ophicleide, a precursor to the tuba which looks like an upturned traffic cone with saxophone-style keys.’
Rachel Armitage on the competitive brass band circuit.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Rachel Armitage on the competitive brass band circuit.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Rachel Armitage · Diary: Brass Bands
Many brass bands were started by factory owners in the belief that music would give their workers purpose, strengthen...
www.lrb.co.uk
January 19, 2026 at 12:50 PM
‘In the 1820s, bands included a range of novel instruments, such as the ophicleide, a precursor to the tuba which looks like an upturned traffic cone with saxophone-style keys.’
Rachel Armitage on the competitive brass band circuit.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Rachel Armitage on the competitive brass band circuit.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
From our Close Readings subscription podcast: Seamus Perry and Mark Ford begin a new series with the treatment of desire in a poem that contains one of the most explicit depictions of sex in English poetry – Marlowe’s ‘Hero and Leander’.
Listen to an extract:
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/n...
Listen to an extract:
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/n...
Narrative Poems: 'Hero and Leander' by Christopher Marlowe
Podcast Episode · Close Readings · 19/01/2026 · Subscribers Only · 58m
podcasts.apple.com
January 19, 2026 at 12:10 PM
From our Close Readings subscription podcast: Seamus Perry and Mark Ford begin a new series with the treatment of desire in a poem that contains one of the most explicit depictions of sex in English poetry – Marlowe’s ‘Hero and Leander’.
Listen to an extract:
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/n...
Listen to an extract:
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/n...