Many writers have played tennis: Nabokov, Frost, Pound, Hemingway, Theodore Roethke, Randall Jarrell, even Solzhenitsyn in Vermont and Martin Amis today. Like poetry, tennis has strict rules and requires technical skill. It is individual yet social, aesthetically pleasing, intellectual, at times erotic. Despite its formal rituals […]
Interview | Robert Lundquist: Never say sorry or common words again
My Father was a boxer. He taught me how to box when I was nine. This commonality, and the need to impress him, informed a great deal. When Charles Bukowski at an event asked me to ‘take it outside’ over a girl, I said okay. I was 21 and shy. Everyone at the party kept telling him […]
Review | Patience by Toby Litt
In every first-person narrative readers are ultimately trapped in the mind of the protagonist, doomed only to know what they know. In Patience, author Toby Litt takes this concept further by sharing the story of Elliott, who is himself trapped in his mind, as his disability inhibits most of his physical movement […]
Interview | Varun Grover: Of Paper Thieves and Nuclear Ducks
One of Varun Grover’s cats is called Chhenapoda, which translates to “Roasted Cheese” in English and is a beloved dessert from Odisha in eastern India. The writer and comic, who likes to name his favourite felines after confectionary, is perhaps best known instead for his biting satire […]
Review | Dragonfly by Jari Moate
Dragonfly, Jari Moate, Tangent Books, 2018, pp.300, £8.99 (paperback) Jari Moate’s novel Dragonfly begins with an ex-soldier known only as…
News | Collyer Bristow Prize 2019 shortlist announced
The London Magazine has announced the 2019 shortlist for the Collyer Bristow Prize for debut fiction. Now in its second…
Essay | On the Benefits of Dancing Naked in Public
In the pub, Jemima raises both her arms above her, then swings one back, turning her head to follow the arc it makes in the air. “Something like that,” she says, sitting back down and taking a chip from the plate between us.
We are attempting a reconstruction. What we are attempting to reconstruct is a theatre show called Trilogy, made by an artist called […]
Review | La Fille du régiment at the Royal Opera House
Donizetti’s familial, romantic French comedy has its fourth revival in Laurent Pelly’s fabulous production at the Royal Opera House. The…
Spotlight V: Journals Edition | LE GUN / Hotel
The London Magazine has long been a champion of emerging writers and independent publishers, stretching back to the 1950s and…
Review | Il Trovatore at Teatro Real
Verdi’s Il Trovatore is notoriously difficult for opera houses to produce. Caruso once said that all you needed for Il…
Review | Giovanna D’Arco at Teatro Real
Verdi’s seventh opera, Giovanna D’Arco premiered in 1845 and tells the story of Joan of Arc, an exceptionally popular subject…
Review | Kiss My Genders & Urban Impulses: Latin American Photography from 1959-2016
Art endows people with the power to take control of their self-expression, to create themselves and identify themselves in a…
Essay | Introduction to Kamala Markandaya’s The Nowhere Man
The following essay is the introduction to the latest edition of The Nowhere Man, a novel by Kamala Markandaya, first…
Review | Group Hat and How Chicago! Imagists 1960s & 70s at De La Warr Pavilion
The waves come and go, breaking on the shore at their own singular pace. Grains of sand become whole under…
Review | Jellyfish at the National Theatre
Ben Weatherhill wrote Jellyfish specifically for the actress Sarah Gordy, and after seeing her incredible performance at The National Theatre,…
Review | Ten Years of Towner Art Gallery
The building itself is an intricate dance of angles, edges and corners; the colours and lines are a call to…
Essay | Low Fidelity: The Case for Shakespeare’s Reinvention by Katrina Bennett
Katrina Bennett Low Fidelity: The Case for Shakespeare’s Reinvention Perhaps more so than any other Elizabethan writer, William Shakespeare was…
Interview | Kevork Mourad: Seeing Through Babel
A new exhibition by the Syrian-Armenian artist Kevork Mourad is being staged at The Ismaili Centre, in partnership with the…
Fiction | The Prisoner by Tammye Huf
Tammye Huf The Prisoner I set my alarm clock for midnight, because at one in the morning we wanted to…
Review | Nan Goldin & Jenny Holzer at Tate Modern
In two exhibitions by Jenny Holzer and Nan Goldin currently on display at the Tate Modern we are presented by…
Review | Orange World and Other Stories by Karen Russell
Orange World and Other Stories, Karen Russell, Penguin, pp. 288, £14.99 (hardcover) Karen Russell’s third short story collection Orange World…
Review | Frank Bowling at Tate Britain
Born in 1934 in what was then British Guiana (now Guyana), Frank Bowling studied at the Royal College of Art…
Interview | Alan Trotter
Alan Trotter is a writer based in Edinburgh. Muscle, his debut novel, was awarded the inaugural Sceptre Prize for a…
Essay | Memories of the 60s by Leonard Quart
Leonard Quart Memories of the 60s I have been trying hard to emotionally survive the Trump era, while living with…
You must be logged in to post a comment.