‘𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘢𝘥𝘮𝘢𝘯’𝘴 𝘖𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢 does not altogether avoid the chortle factor, what with the leek violin, the hog harmonium (or piganino) and the ice didgeridoo.’ Susannah Clapp on a book of musical oddities: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Pepys was a meticulous – some might say compulsive – record-keeper. Into his diary’s pages went social debts, gossip, the music he heard and the plays he saw, and the most intimate aspects of his life, from bodily functions to sex.’ Deborah Friedell on Pepys’s diary: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Historians have done much to challenge the homophobia and xenophobia that skewed interpretations of James. But the caricature of a weak king drooling over his favourites has proved hard to expunge from the public imagination.’ @alicehunt.bsky.social on James VI and I: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘There is murder, sex, duplicity and betrayal, all taking place at the court of one of the richest and most powerful empires of the 16th century.’ Helen Pfeifer on a sensationalist account of the life of Suleyman the Great: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘To read 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘴 nearly half a century later is to recognise that the many defeats the Palestinian population had already endured, along with those of their unreliable Arab friends in three humiliating regional wars, were preparations for worse to come.’ www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Is the Met kouros indelibly – for all its composure – another Actaeon? Do we men and women not always look at his kind of manliness with an admiration subtended by pity and rage?’ T.J. Clark visits and revisits a male statue in the Met: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Bachelard didn’t abandon science but he did embark on a journey into the imagination and never came back for long.’ Michael Wood on the philosophy of Gaston Bachelard: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Though the philosopher's stone remained elusive, the alchemical laboratory produced many useful things, including dyes, medicines and porcelain.’ Nick Richardson on alchemy: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Many MPs elected on Labour’s 2024 vote, which was praised as strategic genius at the time, now face very thin majorities and the likelihood of wipeout at the next election. Incentives for loyalty are few.’ @piercepenniless.bsky.social on Labour’s prospects: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Three of the principals at the meeting that led to the creation of OpenAI fell out with Altman. For each of them, the issue was whether he believed what he had said about the importance of safety in developing AI.’ John Lanchester on Nvidia, OpenAI and hypocrisy: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

the more I read the less hope I have the more I think the sadder I get everything turns into a proof or an argument or a flail maybe it’s my so-called academic training all those gentlemen with lexicons open from ‘Lieu Vague’, a poem by Anne Carson: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Its vocals, when you can make them out (good luck with that), speak to the way it feels to grow up in a body that doesn’t belong to you, whose boundaries blur when someone tries to touch you.’ @notquitehydepark.bsky.social on the trans shoegaze revival: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/de...

‘In backrooms as in ballrooms, in real life as in farce, it is not always possible to see what kind of too much is too much, but journalism is supposed to be able to tell.’ Andrew O’Hagan on how Walter Lippmann shaped liberal journalism: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Netanyahu could talk himself out of any fix. Not for nothing has hasbara or good-news publicity on behalf of Israel been seen as his special, perhaps only, political gift.’ Jacqueline Rose on meeting Benjamin Netanyahu: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘We need to speak of vulnerability: not just the sort that arises asymmetrically from poverty and racism and sexism, but the universal infantile vulnerability that haunts us all – including (and perhaps especially) the most powerful.’ www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Her temper flared when people were bland, self-congratulatory or, worse still, sought her approval. Gary Indiana described her on these occasions as “a hilarious terror”.’ Jo Applin on Louise Bourgeois: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘What must it have been like to live cheek by jowl with the man you’d cuckolded?’ Clare Bucknell on Byron’s adventures in Ravenna, where he romanced Teresa Guiccioli and lived in state with her husband, the elderly Count Alessandro: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Good podcast here from the LRB about the titanic generational crime that was the War On Terror podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a...

‘This isn’t a vision of Inferno: there’s no place for that in Pynchon, no judgment, no damnation. But it’s a useful picture of the way his world works. There are circles everywhere to which people may belong.’ Daniel Soar reads Pynchon’s 𝘚𝘩𝘢𝘥𝘰𝘸 𝘛𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘵: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Decades later, 𝘚𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴still looks like a breakthrough. A concatenation of forces topples over into chaos (then, eventually, rights itself).’ Ange Mlinko on the work of Susan Howe: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘For​ Rimsky-Korsakov, the key of A was clear pink; for Scriabin, it was green. Duke Ellington saw the D notes of his baritone saxophonist, Harry Carney, as dark blue hessian.’ Susannah Clapp on Edward Brooke-Hitching’s The Madman’s Orchestra: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Into his diary’s pages went the most intimate aspects of his life, from bodily functions (including what has been called “one of the best documented attacks of flatulence in history”) to sex.’ Deborah Friedell on the engaging but contradictory Samuel Pepys: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘No king before or since has written so thoughtfully about the nature of kingship. His “manual on kingcraft”, 𝘉𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘰𝘯 𝘋𝘰𝘳𝘰𝘯 (‘The King’s Gift’), became a bestseller.’ Alice Hunt on James VI and I: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘If de Bellaigue’s Suleyman reveals the occasional spark of fairness, the men who serve him are all darkness. Justice is a commodity sold to the highest bidder or the most geriatric mullah.’ Helen Pfeifer questions a new biography of Suleyman the Great: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Dimbleby was generous to the PLO. Maybe he looked well on their armed struggle because he thought it would favour the Palestinian case in the event of a settlement. If so, time has proved him wrong.’ Jeremy Harding on Jonathan Dimbleby’s 1979 book 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘴: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Egyptian sculpture – look again – is not stiff. Bodies made by the best Egyptian sculptors strike a unique balance between composure and intimation of movement.’ T.J. Clark on a Greek male statue at the Met, heavily inspired by Egyptian sculpture: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘He is inviting us to go beyond what we think we know. That is, how to counter boring intuitions with interesting ones. But who is to say which is which?’ Michael Wood on Gaston Bachelard: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘The alchemist’s lab work and the philosophy were inextricable: working with material substances was a sacred endeavour, because matter and spirit were modalities of the same substance.’ Nick Richardson on alchemy: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Voters for the historic duopoly mostly cite the lack of a better alternative that can plausibly win. If that sense changes, the floor will vanish beneath Labour’s feet.’ @piercepenniless.bsky.social on Britain’s political futures: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘My books are on a list of works that have been illegally used in training data. Many more people’s work has been stolen without any evidentiary trail to show it.’ John Lanchester on the AI bubble. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Indonesia has occupied West Papua since 1963. A media blackout means the scant press coverage is often drawn largely from Indonesian military press releases. What happened in Soanggama seems to have been less a “clash” than a massacre.’ Douglas Gerrard: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/de...

‘Almost everyone was against the relationship. Venetian society, which had “tolerated all Byron’s previous sordid adventures”, could not countenance a proper romance.’ Clare Bucknell visits the house where Byron lived with his mistress and her husband. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Bourgeois described one piece as sporting “dear little labial accents”. “Have you ever seen latex used better?” she asked.’ Jo Applin on the connection between Louise Bourgeois’s New York house and her latex work. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

In the latest episode of Aftershock, Daniel Soar, @tomstevenson.bsky.social and Alex de Waal discuss financial warfare as a legacy of the War on Terror. Listen here: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a...

‘There is an inescapable austerity to Howe’s lyricism – a Puritan insistence on abstraction, a poetry without ligatures, even as the elegiac tone grows stronger over the books of the last decade. Ange Mlinko on American poet Susan Howe. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Paracelsus, a vicious critic of Galenic doctors (“a misbegotten crew of approved asses”), transformed the field of alchemy by instructing his peers to make medicines, not gold.’ Nick Richardson on alchemy. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘For​ Rimsky-Korsakov, the key of A was clear pink; for Scriabin, it was green. Duke Ellington read the flight patterns of birds as musical phrases and saw the D notes of his baritone saxophonist as dark blue hessian.’ Susannah Clapp reviews ‘The Madman’s Orchestra’. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘In the right circumstances, a popular rebellion against an unfit king would be an act of virtue. James never accepted this. Instead, he believed that tyranny had to be suffered “without resistance, but by sobs and tears to God”.’ Alice Hunt on James VI and I. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Editors silently rewrote passages that seemed tawdry, or just left them out; it was routine to excise Pepys’s sexual escapades while preserving his wife’s rages, which just made her seem unhinged.’ @deborahfriedell.bsky.social on Samuel Pepys’s diary. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Years after his book appeared, the Palestinian leadership gambled on civil rights, international law and non-violent co-existence as a balkanised state alongside Israel. This did not pay off either.’ Jeremy Harding on a reissued portrait of 1970s Palestinian life. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘If, in January, it could be argued that the jury was still out on a relatively new government, by December that verdict has hardened. Starmer vies with Macron for the accolade of least popular European leader.’ @piercepenniless.bsky.social on the state we’re in. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Running through the heart of Netanyahu’s philosophy is the question of power.’ Jacqueline Rose on her encounter with Benjamin Netanyahu. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Perhaps one in ten West Papuans has been a refugee in the last five years. By clearing Indigenous people from their land, the TNI both eases the extraction process and seeds future conflict: displacement allows extraction which leads to further displacement.’ www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/de...

‘Gaston Bachelard is inviting us to go beyond what we think we know. That is, how to counter boring intuitions with interesting ones. But who is to say which is which?’ Michael Wood on the philosopher of science. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘In 1932, Wisconsin accounted for half of all US cheese production, with a great proportion of it controlled by a single company, Kraft. So it makes sense, in Pynchonworld, that behind everything must be a vast cheese conspiracy.’ Daniel Soar on 𝘚𝘩𝘢𝘥𝘰𝘸 𝘛𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘵. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

after the argument drove past when all I really wanted to say was ‘look at that horse’ well maybe not 𝘢𝘭𝘭 I wouldn’t be this fluffed up if it were 𝘢𝘭𝘭 would I I wouldn’t be passing for sane ‘Lieu Vague’, a poem by Anne Carson. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘When Suleyman is not busy “bashing unbelievers” in The Golden Throne, he is sacking people for rudeness or watching prisoners be trampled by elephants.’ Helen Pfeifer on Suleyman the Magnificent. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘To understand the greatness of Judy Garland, don’t start with 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘪𝘻𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘖𝘻, where the effect of watching and hearing her sing “Over the Rainbow” a mere five minutes in is so exquisitely intense that it’s hard to retain your critical faculties.’ Bee Wilson: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘The colour of the stone – the nakedness of the stone, the play between fleshiness and stoniness – was everything.’ T.J. Clark views a kouros at the Met. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘The shamans of Siberia used the mushroom fly agaric to achieve ecstatic trances, drinking the urine of reindeer that had browsed on it. Our own Father Christmas may be a tortuous folk-memory of this cult.’ Charles Nicholl on St Nick’s trippy past, from the archive. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v0...