‘Too often we treat national security assessments as solemn expressions of a neutral truth by the elected guardians of the people. Yet the case of Peter Mandelson shows just how lopsided and politically motivated those assessments can be.’ @daniellalock.bsky.social www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

‘In late December, as demonstrations swelled across Iran, I was frantically trying to get in touch with my family when a friend returning from the protests wrote to me: “We are full of hope. There is no going back.”’ By @taraaghdashloo.bsky.social www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

Once they rivered everywhere – meanders – currents – you must let me speak words – do not bark at me – my sounds come slowly – no they are not answers – they are cries – how long have you been human ‘You Shall Not Speak’, a poem by @joriegraham.bsky.social. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘It’s understandable that the dead should be angry or vengeful: after all, they have suffered a terrible calamity.’ @mikejay.bsky.social on vampires, revenants and the vengeful dead. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Rather than recreating a replica of the past Mendonça wanted to evoke the period’s “fumes”. That goes some way towards explaining what it feels like to watch the result: you’re inhaling an atmosphere, smelling a memory.’ Gaby Wood watches ‘The Secret Agent’. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Both Democrats and Republicans helped create the infrastructure for ideological surveillance at the US border, but the Trump administration is deploying it in the service of a radically partisan and censorial agenda.’ @jameeljaffer.bsky.social on dangerous ideas. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

On our ‘Aftershock’ podcast, a bonus episode from the LRB archives: ‘The War on Terrorism: Is There an Alternative?’, from May 2002, with a panel featuring Tariq Ali, Christopher Hitchens, Jacqueline Rose, Anatol Lieven and Onora O’Neill. Listen here: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/f...

Huw Lemmey in a blistering piece written last year: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Soldiers at Fort Bragg and another special forces base, Fort Campbell, are more likely to die of drug overdoses than the average US citizen. Dependency on narcotics isn’t the only after-effect of war.’ @lalehkhalili.bsky.social on the symbiosis of drugs and war. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘The destruction of thermal power plants, as well as substations and the distribution network, which has taken place throughout this winter has now coincided with the coldest weather Ukraine has had in years, with temperatures dropping below -20ºC.’ Jen Stout in Kyiv. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘France prefers to honour her as a peerless beauty, a box office godsend and a champion of animal rights, but her militant nativism is the legacy that Le Pen’s people will carry forward into the 2027 presidential race.’ Jeremy Harding on Brigitte Bardot. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘The visual world of the Tudor period is also largely vanished, swept away in those “great alterations”, or for more mundane reasons: eaten by mice; burned in accidental fires; discarded due to wear or changes in fashion.’ Kate Heard on Tudor art. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘He carried on taking pictures as a mordant and playful artist of the clandestine Ukrainian avant-garde. He recorded hardships, absurdities and mundane ecstasies in the period following Khrushchev’s Thaw.’ @briangdillon.bsky.social on Boris Mikhailov. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘For Nicastro, Archimedes was a true scientist who wouldn’t have been caught dead endorsing the “quaint beliefs” held by other Greeks: that circles are the most perfect shape, or that objects fall to earth seeking their proper place.’ Claire Hall on a new biography. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘The use of the future tense suggests that justice starts now, but it could have started, at a minimum, with refusing to consider Mandelson for the post in the first place. Starmer did “look away”.’ @rachelmalik.bsky.social on Starmer’s apology to Epstein’s victims. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

‘Couriers communicated gossip, rumour and political intelligence between cities and states, labourers in a vast information infrastructure that worked across languages and borders.’ @earlymodernjohn.bsky.social on early modern news. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Stella, and other poor Romanians, are motivated by personal and family matters. Why am I so heavily taxed, when teachers, doctors and police have so little time for me and my children? How can I feed and clothe my kids and pay the rent?’ @jamesmeek.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Updike’s misogyny wasn’t as muscular as Mailer’s, or maniacal, as in the case of Roth’s anti-heroes swinging from vine to vine, but when it seeps out it leaves a stain tough to remove because it’s phrased with such lapidary care.’ @jwolcott.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Next Wednesday, journalist, novelist and 𝘓𝘙𝘉 contributing editor @jamesmeek.bsky.social will be at the @londonreviewbookshop.co.uk to discuss his latest novel, 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘓𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘞𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘔𝘦, with Lara Pawson. Tickets here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/james-meek...

‘I can't think of a more democratically damaging story, especially in the context of the global rise of the radical right, where people are saying to you, the system is broken – it's rigged for an elite.’ @petergeoghegan.bsky.social on Mandelson, on the podcast. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/o...

‘In every human culture, burial is hedged about with ritual observance. Yet in certain historical moments the threat of the dangerous dead has flared up into a desperate and persistent conflict with the living.’ @mikejay.bsky.social on vampires and revenants. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Mendonça withholds certain genre satisfactions – the sombre mood of a film about dictatorship, the closure of a character’s demise – and adds others that would crumble in less confident hands.’ Gaby Wood watches ‘The Secret Agent’. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘My friend K said that what was most remarkable now was that you could get so many of your needs met without paying a dollar. “It’s almost like a parallel society being built, a form of anarcho-communism.”’ Amna A. Akbar on community defence as community-building. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

Where is it we are heading. So fast. But is this fast. I must speak what is in my heart. I don’t know if there’s anything left now in my heart. It is so dry. I must scour it with words. ‘You Shall Not Speak’, a poem by Jorie Graham. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time show was a magic trick that revealed what those who refer to other people as “illegal aliens” would prefer to keep hidden or otherwise misrepresented: the contributions made by people of colour to America’s national story.’ Niela Orr: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

‘His DIY approach to doctrine was matched by his DIY approach to worship: he believed that you didn’t need a liturgy, or a church building, or a priest. Yet he had a notion of ecclesial community, if a loose one.’ Tobias Gregory on Milton’s theology. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I vehemently disagree with most of this essay but every now and then I reread it just to marvel at the level of hating it achieves. I will never hate anything as much as this guy hates Stefan Zweig. An inspiration to haters everywhere, really.

‘The Whitehall Mural defined Henry’s image and royal portraiture for centuries to come, but it also sat within a longer tradition of royal genealogies which traced English kings far back to Noah and Brutus of Troy.’ Kate Heard on Tudor art. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘“That was so out of character” is the forgiving flipside of character-based ethics. It might mean: “Rachel is normally generous, but on this occasion unaccountably stole the last chocolate biscuit.”’ Colin Burrow on a defence of the value of character sketches. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

On the podcast: @piercepenniless.bsky.social, @petergeoghegan.bsky.social and @ethanshone.bsky.social discuss Mandelson’s influence and explore how the lobbying and advisory industries are undermining democratic legitimacy. Listen wherever you get podcasts. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

‘Some pictures have the dreamy aspect of stills from Tarkovsky: the statue of a melancholy angel surrounded by stalks of dry grain or grass; a woman lying down in a field of fire.’ @briangdillon.bsky.social on the Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Fantastic essay on politics, life, and the apocalypse. ‘If we believe we are on the road to cataclysm, what happens to politics?’ www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Other statements are vaguer: “People with power failed you.” Does “people with power” include Starmer? Is he sorry in the sense of accepting responsibility or of recognising distress?’ @rachelmalik.bsky.social on Starmer’s apology to Epstein’s victims, from the blog. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

‘The mechanical method exposed a way of thinking that set him apart from an earlier generation of philosopher-mathematicians: he trusted that the intellectual world of mathematics corresponded to material reality.’ Claire Hall on Archimedes. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘There is an undeniable symmetry between surges in drug use in the US and the country’s covert operations overseas. The wars in Indochina gave the US heroin epidemics; Latin America, a plague of powder and crack cocaine.’ @lalehkhalili.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

In Kyiv: ‘High-rise blocks, twelve or sixteen-storey Soviet prefabs, and newer, even taller, buildings of concrete or glass march into the distance; almost none of these thousands of rooms had a light on.’ Jen Stout on the Russian assault on Ukraine’s energy grid. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Already the performance read like a one-off musical edition of the labour docuseries How It’s Made, but featuring sugar and song, two popular and politicised products of the Caribbean.’ Niela Orr on the Superbowl half-time show, from the blog. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

‘Then there is the issue of the cunt fixation, the word itself and its referent. Updike’s persistent use often reveals a colonial aspect, of territorial possession or advantageous incursion.’ Read James Wolcott on Updike here: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

The Mandelson story is a rare glimpse into the private life of power, and the extent of state capture by unconstrained wealth. @petergeoghegan.bsky.social & @ethanshone.bsky.social joined me on @lrb.co.uk ON POLITICS to lay out just what that corruption means: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...

‘The Trump administration has told consular officers not to issue visas to applicants who have worked on fact-checking, combating misinformation, online safety or content moderation – activities it characterises as “censorship”.’ By @jameeljaffer.bsky.social www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘ICE have gone from wearing tactical army gear to Midwestern civilian garb; I have even seen photos of agents in keffiyehs. They have changed their cars and their licence plates: from out-of-state to in-state, to blotted plates or none at all.’ By Amna A. Akbar www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

My review of Seth Harp’s The Fort Bragg Cartel, and thinking about the US special operators and their ties to drugs: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘The speech offers no concrete proposals to go with his vague commitments. It’s another empty restatement of patriotic renewal, made while looking over both shoulders and avoiding anything of substance.’ @rachelmalik.bsky.social on Starmer’s Mandelson apology. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

‘Georgescu’s political programme is based on the need to heal Romania by creating a synthetic medieval country, agrarian, artisanal, patriarchal, self-sufficient in organic food, purged of chemicals, purged of modernity, purged of everything and everyone he dislikes.’ www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

To my knowledge, moving prisoners around the country in an attempt to avoid habeas corpus review has been banned since at least the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679. Habeas corpus is, of course, protected in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

‘The early modern postal system had its origins in medieval northern Italy. Political intrigue and commercial exigency fed the need for a reliable service.’ @earlymodernjohn.bsky.social on early modern news: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Betwixt and between is a strange place for any major writer to be more than a decade and a half after their death, and Updike’s standing in the literary hereafter remains profoundly iffy.’ James Wolcott reconsiders John Updike www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I wrote about Trump’s ideological deportation policies and their implications for free speech, including on university campuses. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Issue 48.03 is now online, featuring: Seamus Perry on pluralism and poetry James Wolcott on John Updike @jamesmeek.bsky.social on the Romanian right Claire Hall on Archimedes John Gallagher on early modern news @lalehkhalili.bsky.social on the US Special Forces Read online at lrb.co.uk

On Politics: Mandelson and the Private Life of Power James Butler (@piercepenniless.bsky.social) is joined by investigative journalists @petergeoghegan.bsky.social and @ethanshone.bsky.social. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/o...