‘How is it possible to move on from such widespread collective trauma, and forget the innumerable dead? This is the question at the heart of Mrs Dalloway.’
Elizabeth Gourd on Mrs Dalloway, 100 years on.
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 | There is No Forgetfulness (Sonata) by Pablo Neruda
‘If you ask me where I come from I have to start talking with broken objects, / with kitchenware that has too much bitterness, / with animals quite often rotten, / and with my heavy soul.’
From 1965, poetry by Pablo Neruda.
News | Kevin Graham wins The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2025
‘All three winning poems speak of dislocation, of whim, of the untethered state of our being, while also being contained within the razor-sharp precision that language can offer.’
Prize winners announced for this year’s Poetry Prize.
Interview | Uncommon Ground: An Interview with Patrick Galbraith
‘If people really engaged with the countryside, really understood it, I think there would be fewer calls for more access.’
Tommy Gilhooly speaks to Patrick Galbraith.
Interview | The Call is Coming from Inside the House: An Interview with Krystelle Bamford
‘There’s a certain hubris in being shocked by tragedy and then turning it into a myth. It’s like, something that happens to everyone becomes this epic, world-shattering thing because it happened to you.’
Krystelle Bamford interviewed by Lilia Fetini.
Archive | From Realism to Reality by Alain Robbe-Grillet
‘To explain meanings that are already known goes against the most important demand of literature.’
From 1965, an essay on realism by Alain Robbe-Grillet (trans. Barbara Wright).
Archive | Acts of Contrition by Michael Donaghy
‘I could be anyone you want me to be. / I might come round to your point of view.’
From 1994, poetry by Michael Donaghy.
Interview | John Cornwell on Death in Devon and Ted Hughes’s Theory of the Troglodyte
‘Why do people enjoy true crime? I think the procedural aspect of it, the detective work – which is a natural page turner – that makes it very enjoyable, and it takes you right out of yourself – if it’s good.’
Tommy Gilhooly speaks to John Cornwell about his true crime classic Earth to Earth.
Archive | Poetry, Sold Out by Hugo Williams
‘Poetry on the grand scale, poetry in the raw, poetry on the attack, but best of all, Beat Poetry in the Albert Hall.’
From 1965, Hugo Williams reviews Poetry Incarnation at the Royal Albert Hall.
Interview | Hanna Thomas Uose on Immortality and Tech Bros
‘Within the next 15 to 20 years, I would bet there’s going to be a group of people who are on some form of fairly effective longevity medication.’
Isabel Brooks speaks to Hanna Thomas Uose.
Interview | The Rest of Our Lives: Benjamin Markovits in Conversation
‘The reason I want to write novels rather than philosophy is that I want whatever point the novel makes to have a kind of undertone of disagreement with itself.’
Jamie Cameron speaks to Benjamin Markovits.
Interview | Textures of Ambivalence: Harriet Baker on Woolf, Warner and Lehmann
‘I was taking a revisionary feminist approach to literary archives, in the sense that I wanted to argue for the value of these domestic texts, that they can indeed tell a whole of a life.’
An interview with Harriet Baker, winner of the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award.
Archive | An Interview with Susan Sontag
‘Writing is such an un-natural activity that one has to keep in practice, like sport, or playing a musical instrument.’
From 1979, an interview with Susan Sontag.
Podcast | Mark Bowles
‘To exaggerate something is like putting a magnifying glass on it. You exaggerate your rage, you exaggerate your love, and you can see it more clearly.’
Mark Bowles on corporate jargon, his love of espresso and whether or not his book can be called an anti-English novel.
Fiction | The Inspection by Joshua Jones
‘Maybe they just won’t look up, he said. Many people go their whole lives without looking up.’
New short fiction by Joshua Jones.
Review | Art as Archive by Meesha Williams
‘Where dominant narratives and imagery tend to sanitise motherhood, all white sheets or postpartum glow, Gore’s depiction is tender and painful in a way that feels truthful.’
Meesha Williams reviews Sylee Gore’s Maximum Summer.
Essay | What Would the Romantics Say? by Lee Hatsumi Mayer
‘If the meaning of a poem is obvious without breaking scrolling pace, then a core aspect of the form has been lost.’
Lee Hatsumi Mayer on the Romantic poets today.
Guide | A London Guide to the Future of the Novel by Simon Okotie
‘From the moment Don Quixote loses his mind from reading too many tales of chivalry, adopting their plots, characters and style for his own adventures, the modern novel has been grounded in a relationship with other texts – a process that generative AI now seems to be accelerating.’
Simon Okotie on the future of the novel.
Interview | ‘Left Hand, Right Hand’: Christopher Le Brun and Charlotte Verity
‘We are both more in favour of speaking rather than shouting, and as visual hunters we are happier when seeking than we are when parading the spoils of the hunt.’
An interview with Christopher Le Brun and Charlotte Verity.
Fiction | Roses, Falling by Rupert Dastur
‘I cannot believe what I’m seeing, but there is no doubting it: roses are falling from the sky; the sort to fill vases or lay on gravesides: red and white, peach and pink, full-headed, green tear-drop leaves spaced along thorny stem.’
New fiction by Rupert Dastur.
Fiction | Dengue Boy by Michel Nieva
‘With relief, with childlike awe, she understood that her entire life had been determined by a grammatical error.’
An extract from Dengue Boy by Michel Nieva.
Archive | Ascension Day 1964 by W. H. Auden
‘We must / Go through the ritual / Formulæ of farewell, // The words, the looks, / The embraces, knowing / That this time they are final.’
From 1964, a poem by W. H. Auden.
Fiction | Margot by Marni Appleton
‘It wasn’t that I didn’t love Margot. I did, desperately, but watching people make fun of her made me feel better about myself. It was one of the only things that did.’
Short fiction by Marni Appleton. An extract from ‘I Hope You’re Happy’.