‘Thomas spends much of his letters from Iran begging his wife to forgive his various infidelities. What’s sometimes lost in this personal story is that he had arrived in Iran at an extraordinary time, a period of high intrigue not only in the country’s history but in the wider drama of the twentieth century.’
Kasra Lang on Dylan Thomas’s 1951 trip to Iran.
‘The central achievement of Doom Painting is not to show how the past has shaped us (an obvious enough move for any historical novelist), but rather to emphasise how far the present lives within the past.’
Joseph Williams reviews Doom Painting.
‘Everywhere beings who worry, who notice birthdays, who war. / And still, existence’s single dice-throw – / the wish to go on, over not.’
Poetry by Jane Hirshfield.
Next summer, join The London Magazine on one of two writing retreats at The Mill, France.
While our editorial team will be on hand throughout the week to lead workshops, facilitate conversations and offer one-to-one editorial feedback, the retreat is designed so that you can write at your own pace.
‘The printed page is the place in which to examine the works of a poem, and the platform the place on which to give the poem the works.’
From 1952, a speech by Dylan Thomas.
‘Early on I found that what was painful in my life, when objectified on the page, gave me a sensation of power.’
Heather Cass White interviews Diane Williams.
‘And every year autumn brings as its aftermath more disappointed ambition, more vows to change one’s publisher, more accusations of favouritism against literary editors and critics, more homicidal indignation with booksellers than satisfied vanity or solid cash.’
John Lehmann in November 1954.
‘When I recently bumped into the famed nephew of Jamal Khatib on the beaches of Beirut, five-thousand four-hundred miles from where we had last seen one another and over a decade later, it was his toothy grin I recognised first.’
A. Naji Bakhti on Jamal Khatib.
‘The value of his conversation lay less in the force of what was being said, for all its swift flexibility, diversity, colour, good sense, and constancy to a single vision of truth, than in the interest and charm of his presence, that this talk made articulate.’
From 1958, Brewster Ghiselin on D. H. Lawrence.
‘I do think, perhaps naïvely, that literature should try to capture something that is essentially unsayable.’
Sruti Basak interviews Ayşegül Savaş.
‘I was horrified only by a certain sort of horror that might be described as moral: hidden thoughts and vices, unconfessed diseases, whatever is endured in shame and solitude, whereas I was not at all horrified by murder.’
From 1955, short fiction by Marguerite Duras.
‘For me, that is what writing is: placing the obstacles at the centre and telling the story of the failures and attempts to overcome them.’
An interview with Domenico Starnone.
‘She felt some new horror of change impending; an end was approaching that was more a beginning; but the beginning of something already hated, far too well known.’
From 1954, short fiction by Anna Kavan.
‘What alternatives might there be to Schwarzman’s vision of the humanities? Is there a way to reject the co-option of the humanities into the service of technology, profit and optimisation?’
Georgie Fooks on the Schwarzman Centre and the future of the humanities.
‘In fifty years’ time, things will be different. We shall have reached a state where personality will be free.’
From 1956, an interview with Bertolt Brecht.
‘Flushing in Shango’s honour I brood on punishment and love, and invoke his epiphany, here and now, in Britannia, bold but gentle, brave but neutral, an orisha in touch with the dead, the living and the yet to be, and with only double axes to grind.’
From 1970, Tony Harrison on Cuba and Shango.
On The London Magazine podcast, we speak to brilliant writers, poets and artists about their craft, inspiration and career so far. New episodes every month.
Ann Goldstein discusses the oxymoron of the ‘celebrated translator’, her early encounters with Italian through Dante and the story of how she became Ferrante’s translator. Goldstein reflects on Ferrante’s unique syntax and style, as well as the broader challenges of Italian–English translation.
‘This is where I say to any budding writers out there: write historical fiction!’
Gurnaik Johal on The London Magazine Podcast.
‘One of the things that the novel is about is different forms of chronology that we mark things by.’
Leo Robson on The London Magazine Podcast.
‘The printed page is the place in which to examine the works of a poem, and the platform the place on which to give the poem the works.’
From 1952, a speech by Dylan Thomas.
‘And every year autumn brings as its aftermath more disappointed ambition, more vows to change one’s publisher, more accusations of favouritism against literary editors and critics, more homicidal indignation with booksellers than satisfied vanity or solid cash.’
John Lehmann in November 1954.
‘The value of his conversation lay less in the force of what was being said, for all its swift flexibility, diversity, colour, good sense, and constancy to a single vision of truth, than in the interest and charm of his presence, that this talk made articulate.’
From 1958, Brewster Ghiselin on D. H. Lawrence.
