LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS

MAY 8. 2026

Alex Cocotas: Diary

Harrison’s life and career was part of the postwar flowering of the avant-garde, which reached its apotheosis in the. ..

Nicole Flattery: Zip him in a bodybag

In some ways, Amie Barrodale’s first novel, Trip, is a send-up of a culture obsessed with ‘healthmaxxing’, where. ..

Adam Mars-Jones: Another Ilk

Circumstantial evidence suggests that Vigil. ..

Tom Johnson: At Senate House

The story​ of the English printing press has no convenient beginning. It makes for inconsistent centennials; a quatercentenary celebration was held in 1877, two quincentenary exhibitions in 1975...

Youssef Ben Ismail: His Favourite Camel

That slavery persisted in Muslim societies well into the 20th century is undeniable. More questions need to be asked. ..

Robert Cioffi: Pharaoh in all but name

The Ptolemies came too late for many histories of Greece and Egypt and too early for Rome. Alexandria, their capital, ...

Ben Walker: Samurai Suits

Early samurai were members of a professional warrior class who served under a daimyo; they fought with bow and arrow on. ..

Nicholas Higham: Sword’s Edge

While Æthelstan’s grandfather, Alfred, had revived the practice of issuing law codes, Æthelstan was by far the most. ..

Emily Berry: Summons from a Witch

Lynette Roberts loved obscure words and was not shy about using them. Over the course of two pages, I had to look up ‘. ..

Becca Rothfeld: Mourning the Houseplant

Walls of various kinds are present in almost all of Marlen Haushofer’s writing. They are a means of both entrapment. ..

Thomas Nagel: I’m not sorry

Whether the causal order of nature is deterministic or partly random, people do not create themselves. So how can it. ..

Diarmaid MacCulloch: Fighting Monks

‘Westerners’ have told themselves a story of their past dominated by a fluke in human history: the rise of a single. ..

Tarn MacArthur: The Clearance of Aoineadh Mòr, 1824

The people of Unnimore thought that ‘flitting’ would not come upon them while they lived. As long as they paid the rent, and that was not difficult to do, anxiety did not come near. ..

Tom Stevenson: We were doing well when I left

Many of those who had been involved in the war’s inception saw the chaotic Nato withdrawal in August 2021 as a. ..