‘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...

‘In February 1660, Pepys noted that the government was so unpopular that “boys do now cry ‘Kiss my Parliament’ instead of ‘Kiss my arse.’”’ @deborahfriedell.bsky.social on the decipherment of Samuel Pepys. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

A book I especially loved this year: "The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary" by @kateloveman.bsky.social. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

“the diary became Pepys’s secret ledger, the place for him to record bribes (‘considerations’) and the elaborate justifications he might one day need to defend them.” @deborahfriedell.bsky.social in @lrb.co.uk

To go after a family for no other reason than that their daughter sparked sympathy is appalling. Absolutely appalling. Beyond cruelty into outright sadism.

In this week’s episode of the LRB podcast I speak with the filmmaker Sepideh Farsi about her new documentary, ‘Put Your Soul in Your Hand and Walk,’ a portrait of Fatma Hassona, a photographer in Gaza who was killed in an Israeli air strike on April 15. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

Writers! Applications for the Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award are open. This year, we've increased the prize to $15,000 to account for the higher cost of pasta. Apply now: journalism.nyu.edu/about-us/awa...

Join us at our Christmas Late Shopping Evenings on 3, 10, and 18 December and get 10% off all books bought on the night. Our neighbours at St. JOHN will also be open late for festive food and drink purchases. Attendance is free! Tickets here:

On 27 October @adamtooze.bsky.social will give the inaugural 𝘓𝘙𝘉 Autumn Lecture in New York on the subject of Electrostates, Petrostates & the New Cold War. Book now: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/nyc-lectur...

I love the @lrb.co.uk “Close Readings” podcast, so it was a total treat to do this episode with @moonjets.bsky.social & Colm Tóibín on Henry James -- even if Colm remains inexplicably blind to the charms of Lord Warburton & his moat. www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and...

I wrote about Artificial Desire www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Based on the novel "Box Hill" by none other than Adam Mars-Jones! @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social

‪Tony Harrison's 'V.' was first published in the London Review of Books in 1985. The front page of the Daily Mail reported on the 'FOUR LETTER TV POEM FURY.' www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v0...

'Welcome to my last four years.' A search for accountability and a full, detailed explanation for Martha's death . . . www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘Israel’s allies are still buying time for Israel to change course or come to a deal with Hamas over how many trucks to allow in, as though food were a legitimate bargaining chip. Gazans cannot afford to wait for either.’ New on the blog: Amjad Iraqi on Gaza. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ju...

On the Bayeux Tapestry, Anglo-French relations, Macron, European borders, small boats and British warships, from seven years ago www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

The cartoonist Jules Feiffer once wrote that Superman’s real home wasn’t Krypton but “the planet Poland, from Lodz maybe, possibly Crakow, maybe Vilna.” Of course Superman is an immigrant. I wrote about him for the @newyorker.com in 2013: www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...

Zohran's father, Mahmood Mamdani, wrote for @lrb.co.uk about his family's expulsion from Uganda www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Doing a lil’ local talk tomorrow night, come on out southeast London!

"When I wrote that I’d had sex over the years with 3,000 men, one of my contemporaries asked pityingly: ‘Why so few?’” Edmund White's essays in the @lrb.co.uk archive: www.lrb.co.uk/contributors... & Adam Phillips on White's autobiography www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v2...

Deadline a week today. The Martha Mills Young Writers’ Prize 2025 www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/blog/2025/ma...

Very late indeed to this remarkable Helen Sullivan piece, the opening of a crack into another (to me) world www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

F. Scott Fitzgerald said that he would attempt a serious novel one more time. If it failed, he would ‘come home, go to Hollywood and learn the movie business’. That is what he did. Then he died. Thomas Powers on 'The Great Gatsby' in the @lrb.co.uk: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v3...

Londres! Laurent Binet will be speaking with Thomas Jones on Tuesday at the French Institute in South Ken: www.institut-francais.org.uk/events-agend... @atahualpavasari.bsky.social @moonjets.bsky.social @lrb.co.uk

‘Musk offered to do to America just what he’d done for Twitter.’ Deborah Friedell on Elon Musk: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

"But the logic of Christ, as the inquisitor presents it, is essentially no different from the logic of capitalism. It’s your responsibility to save yourself: no one is going to do it for you." from @danielsoar.bsky.social's astonishing essay on the Brothers K: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...