London Review of Books
Europe’s leading magazine of ideas, published twice a month. Book reviews and essays (and much more online) renowned for their fearlessness, range and elegance.
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London Review of Books
In the 160s CE, Rome was struck by a devastating disease which, a new book argues, may have been the world’s first pandemic. Galen began his career treating ’the protracted plague’ with viper flesh, opium and urine, but despite his extensive documentation, we still don’t know what a modern diagnosis would be. Josephine Quinn joins Malin to discuss contemporary theories...

Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell look at Jane Austen's use of the words 'interest' and 'interesting' and the significance of women reading in her novels in this extract from their podcast series 'On Satire'.

'On Satire' is part of our Close Readings podcast collection. To listen to the full episode on Jane Austen and all our other series, subscribe:

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Patrick McGuinness reads his diary from our 6 June issue about his family’s hometown of Bouillon in Belgium. He reflects on the linguistic and national barriers he crossed to return there each year and on the changes wrought on the town by the end of the industrial era.

Read it here:

Diary: Back to Bouillon

When Wittgenstein published his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in 1921, he claimed to have solved all philosophical problems. One problem that hasn’t been solved though is how best to translate this notoriously difficult work. The expiry of the book’s copyright in 2021 has brought three new English translations in less than a year, each grappling with the difficulties...

Whitman wrote several poetic responses to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He came to detest his most famous, ‘O Captain! My Captain!’, and in ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd’ Lincoln is not imagined in presidential terms but contained within a love elegy that attempts to unite his death with the 600,000 deaths of the civil war and reconfigure the...

The worst thing you can say to anyone who works in hospitality, Mendez writes, is ‘Maybe you’ll meet someone!’ But a chance encounter while waiting tables lead to their new niche. In this episode, Mendez reads their recent piece about the art of audiobook narration and how they became the voice of Pelé.

You can read Mendez’s piece here.

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