Our new issue 47.16 is now online, featuring: @tomstevenson.bsky.social in El Salvador Kasia Boddy on Dorothy Parker Seamus Perry on Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce Ruby Hamilton on David Lynch and Emily Witt (@embits.bsky.social) on the manosphere. Read online at lrb.co.uk

‘Calling himself the “coolest dictator in the world”, the restorer of the state monopoly on violence has replaced the state and seized the monopoly for himself.’ @tomstevenson.bsky.social on El Salvador under Nayib Bukele: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

In the new @LRB, I went to El Salvador, where Nayib Bukele has mopped up the gangs and set up Washington's favourite prison state. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘A friend was reading to me one day from 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘴 and I misheard a line as “the senses have wind.” They did, they do.’ @tricialockwood.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Trump's Midnight Hammer www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ju...

Iran's nuclear programme is mainly a diversionary justification for this attack - not a motive.

Issue 47.11 is now online, featuring: William Davies on right-wing TikTok Andrew O’Hagan on Joan Didion Tom Crewe on Ocean Vuong Francesca Wade on the librarian Belle da Costa Greene Jenny Turner on Olga Tokarczuk and a cover by Lola Bunting. Read online at www.lrb.co.uk

In 2019, a group of scientists led by Owen Toon, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, modelled the climatic effects of a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan in 2025. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ma...

On the Mar-a-Lago Secretary of State www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ma...

In the new @londonreview.bsky.social, I wrote about the decipherment of the 4000 year old Linear Elamite script by François Desset www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

In the new @londonreview.bsky.social, I wrote about Hamas. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

In the new @londonreview.bsky.social, on Assad's fall, the post-Arab Spring era, and Turkey's and Israel's opportunism www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

‘The problem with painting Trump as the harbinger of the end of an enlightened international order is that it prompts the question of what that order is really like.’ Tom Stevenson on Trump and US power, online early from our next issue: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

In the new LRB, I wrote about Trump, who has more in common with his domestic opponents than they like to admit. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

In the new LRB, I wrote about how Israel has replaced much of Gaza with an uneven igneous landscape of black-grey mounds. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...