‘Modern biology strengthens what Darwin already noted: nature experiments constantly with sex and gender, without being reduced to any single pattern.’
Alicia Kopf on Darwin, sexual selection and orchids.
Essay | Sylvia, the Ghost Writer by Melanie McGee Bianchi
‘If she’s tampering with me and my middlebrow money-grubbing from some supernatural plane, perhaps it’s just another chore to check off for the overachiever who once journaled, “What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless”.’
Melanie McGee Bianchi on Sylvia Plath’s guest editorship of Mademoiselle and Plath’s cult of perpetuity.
Interview | Post-Pastoral: An Interview with Zakia Sewell
‘As someone of mixed heritage, I contain or embody the oppressor and the oppressed.’
Joseph Williams interviews Zakia Sewell.
Review | Common People by Fonie Mitsopoulou
‘The novel’s central question is this: can afflicted people find community and security outside of the households they were born into, or is everyone willing to manipulate and deceive those around them if the situation calls for it?’
Fonie Mitsopoulou reviews Mieko Kawakami’s Sisters in Yellow.
Interview | Rishi Dastidar in Conversation with Sarah Howe
‘I lean on the Clive James idea that a poem is the only art form where you can order a coffee, and even before the drink has gone cold, you could have written something that will still be read in five hundred years’ time.’
Rishi Dastidar in Conversation with Sarah Howe.
Interview | Will Self on the End of Satire, the Rise of Fascism and Writing His Own Death
‘Someone who can’t read a book cannot deliberate, cannot think and cannot conceptualise, and therefore is a threat. We couldn’t have picked a worse time to become more stupid than when we needed more intelligence.’
Alex Dommett speaks to Will Self.
Poetry | Monrovia, 2010 by Nathaniel Calhoun
‘there were war criminals around. that was / in the air. in our ice cubes. it made you feel like a decent guy.’
New poetry by Nathaniel Calhoun.
Fiction | The Overpass by Jiaqi Kang
‘All those who disappeared had to come back. Or at least, they had to announce their intention to disappear before they disappeared. Otherwise, how would anybody know?’
Awarded second place in the Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize 2025, ‘The Overpass’ by Jiaqi Kang.
Poetry | Dear Dolly by Jasmine Gibbs
‘And when // they upped your dose of anaesthetic, from lucid haze to euthanasia, / it was almost a mercy.’
New poetry by Jasmine Gibbs.
Essay | The Windy Moors of Đà Lạt by Nguyễn Bình
‘Perhaps, in Wuthering Heights, Nhất Linh saw a likeness of what was happening around him: endless divisions and cycles of violence, one side propped up as the opposite of an oppressive other, only to show itself just as capable of oppression as that sworn enemy.’
Nguyễn Bình on Nhất Linh’s Vietnamese translation of Wuthering Heights.
Essay | Imaging the Invisible by Oriol Ponsatí-Murlà
‘When something like this happens then the image isn’t merely a banal transposition of reality. It creates a certain reality, of a very particular character, because it has the capacity to go beyond itself. To transcend itself.’
Oriol Ponsatí-Murlà on the advent of photography and documenting the dead.
Fiction | On Not Knowing English by Sergi Pàmies
‘I distract myself with the idea that human beings can be divided into two categories: those who wait, and those who make others wait. If forced to, I’d describe myself as one of those who wait.’
Short fiction by Sergi Pàmies.
Essay | Flags Made in China by Marina Garcés
‘If we take a closer look at them, flags don’t express the eternal identity of nations but the power relations upon which today’s nation states have been constructed and consolidated.’
Marina Garcés on Catalan flags and nation states.
New Issue and Tote Bag Bundle
With the new issue and tote bag bundle, save 20% on the cost of the Catalan Issue 2026 and the bespoke TLM tote. The latest issue includes Marina Garcés on Catalan flags and nation states, Oriol Ponsatí-Murlà on the advent of photography and documenting the dead, posthumous short fiction by Mercè Rodoreda and artwork by Mari Chordà and Àngels Ribé. The…
£20.00
Podcast
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.
Podcast | Ann Goldstein
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.
Podcast | Gurnaik Johal
‘This is where I say to any budding writers out there: write historical fiction!’
Gurnaik Johal on The London Magazine Podcast.
Podcast | Leo Robson
‘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.
Archive
The London Magazine has a publication history spanning almost three hundred years, and has featured work by some of the most prominent names in literature, from John Keats to Hilary Mantel. In this curated selection, we share our favourite pieces from the TLM archive.
Archive | A 1962 Survey of Poets
The February 1962 edition of The London Magazine was dedicated to poetry.
Editor Alan Ross spoke to several poets at the time about their craft and thoughts on poetry, including Robert Graves, Philip Larkin, Derek Walcott, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and more.
Archive | The Predicament of International Style: British Painters in 1961
‘The real merit of British painting is that it is at its best romantic, unclassical, particular, fanatical, self-obsessed and the result of close observation in a misty country that has longish winter evenings.’
A survey of British painters in 1961.
Archive | Gore Vidal: Puritan Moralist
‘I have the sense that Vidal is frequently accused of cruelty when, in fact, he is simply being candid, a quality not greatly appreciated in a literary community which tends to view all criticism as conspiratorial or personally motivated.’
From 1981, an interview with Gore Vidal.
