‘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.
‘While it must be stressed that Rankine’s lyric practice is capacious and stylistically thrilling, that her insights are always valuable in isolation, I am left slightly unsure of what Triage’s greater intentions are.’
Devki Panchmatia on Claudia Rankine.
‘Partly due to critical neglect, partly due to the single-minded determination to be a poet who survived on nothing but his poetry, Harrison’s prose is doomed to be a footnote in his career.’
Dane Holt on Tony Harrison’s underappreciated prose.
‘Might there be something, beyond backwater nihilism, in the vanishing of the Tree at Sycamore Gap that speaks to us about a country increasingly unable to protect its social and civic structures in the most basic ways?’
Alex Niven on the Sycamore Gap and cycles of decline.
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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 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.
‘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.
‘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.
