LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS

FEBRUARY 20. 2026

Clare Bucknell: At the National Gallery

Like darkness, light at its most powerful could disorientate, overpower, blind the senses. Joseph Wright of Derby’s. ..

Adam Mars-Jones: Do lobotomies have a smell?

Adèle Yon says that she enjoys it when the archives lose their footing , revealing their. ..

Maureen N. McLane: From ‘Daybook’

a dead queen a red kingan orange polis crashwhere is the high styleo poet the republic requires& where the Polish heroes& can the heroic be generalcommunal asks the engorgedpopulace we we. ..

David Trotter: Little and Large

Davis has identified the moment at which she understood that it is possible to derive the material of a story ‘almost. ..

Alexander Bevilacqua: We need a better plan

Young Earth creationists insist that the Bible be read literally. In their view, to reject biblical chronology or. ..

Barbara Newman: Kin-Slaying

The origin legend was a widespread medieval genre used to account not only for peoples and nations, but also for the. ..

Long Ling: Diary

My husband and I agreed to divorce on the Minor New Year, the day that marks the beginning of preparations for the. ..

FEBRUARY 6. 2026

Seamus Perry: Pluralism and the Modern Poet

‘Art arises, ’ Auden writes, ‘out of our desire for both beauty and truth and our knowledge that they are not. ..

James Wolcott: What you can get away with

Betwixt and between is a strange place for any major writer to be more than a decade and a half after their death, and. ..

Mike Jay: Demand Stolen Rings

It’s understandable that the dead should be angry or vengeful: after all, they have suffered a terrible calamity. ...

Tobias Gregory: A Terrier and a Camel

De Doctrina Christiana matters because it mattered to Milton. You can ignore it and still enjoy his poetry, but if you. ..

Jorie Graham: You Shall Not Speak

your mind. Turnaround. Lookthe other way. Is there anotherway. Go ahead. Try to positthe future. It’sjust down there she sd, hesd, the bodies torn topieces sd, the skins like rags, the bloody. ..

Laleh Khalili: Guns, Money and Opium

There is an undeniable symmetry between surges in drug use in the US and the country’s covert operations overseas. The. ..

Jen Stout: Short Cuts

The 9 January attack, which left six thousand Kyiv housing blocks without heating, was far from the first Russian. ..