‘I have always written in the first person. I find it extremely difficult to use the third person because we are all, deep down, incurable individualists.’
From 1985, an interview with Natalia Ginzburg.
Interview | The Expansion Project: An Interview with Ben Pester
‘I remember being cross at work when Google were getting rid a bit of software and the announcement said Google is “sunsetting” this product. Sunsetting! You can’t have the sunset.’
Joseph Williams speaks to Ben Pester.
Archive | Christopher Isherwood: A Conversation on Tape
‘What is true is that the dry as dust academic thing on the one hand and the sloppy solarplexus thing on the other, end in both cases in utter artistic death. But the writers form a great line in between those two and some are more at one end and some are more at the other.’
From 1960, an interview with Christopher Isherwood.
Interview | Joanna Pocock on Greyhound and America as the Ailing Motherland
‘I love the fact that Americans are still working out concepts like, what is freedom? What does freedom look like? Is it libertarian? Is it a socialist thing? Is it more of a free market thing? They grapple with the big things.’
Emmeline Armitage speaks to Joanna Pocock.
Archive | A Trip to Mentone by Italo Calvino
‘I fell into a melancholy train of thought. I wasn’t suited to live under Fascism but Fascism would win. It was the worst people who won wars.’
From 1955, short fiction by Italo Calvino.
Archive | Cyril Connolly’s Cure for the Fear of Death
‘When we die we become what we have loved, and were I to be vaporised tomorrow, the bulk of me would soon be staring out at the world through those topaz panes at which I now dream my life away looking in.’
Cyril Connolly on the fear of death.
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.
Archive | Oasis in 1997 by Archie Cotterell
‘That they have been aided by a culture which celebrates men behaving badly and football as an art form is without doubt.’
From 1997, Archie Cotterell’s take on Oasis.
Guide | Found in Translation: JLF London at the British Library 2025
Its twelfth UK edition, and its ninth at the British Library, JLF London returned this June with a weekend of expansive and cross-cultural conversation. With nearly 40 talks across literature, art, gardening, food, music and film, the programme was diverse and incisive.
Review | Use the Words You Have by Kimberly Campanello
‘Use the Words You Have is not just a novel of desire. It’s a meditation on the nature of language itself.’
Bruce Omar Yates reviews Kimberly Campanello’s debut novel, Use the Words You Have.
Essay | Wendy Erskine: ‘Short stories are our natural mode.’
‘Short stories are our natural mode. There’s nothing intimidating about the short story. We have been reading and telling them our whole lives.’
An essay on the short story form by Wendy Erskine, reproduced with permission from 22 Fictions.
Interview | ‘An anti-flâneuse kind of existence’: In conversation with Lauren Elkin
‘I don’t know if it’s very interesting to read fiction where you can feel that the author is judging the character. It’s so important that the novel be a space of non-judgment, for the readers to take from it what they will.’
Rosa Appignanesi interviews Lauren Elkin.
Archive | Ted Hughes and Crow
‘Poetry is nothing if not the record of just how the forces of the Universe try to redress some balance disturbed by human error.’
From 1971, an interview with Ted Hughes.
Podcast | Gurnaik Johal
‘This is where I say to any budding writers out there: write historical fiction!’
Gurnaik Johal on The London Magazine Podcast.
Essay | The Kind of Shaking that Keeps You Steady: Alice Notley (1945–2025)
‘The insouciant yet deeply serious quality of Notley’s writing struck me. Here was a poet eschewing all templates, excavating the self with both horror and humour.’
Momtaza Mehri pays tribute to Alice Notley who passed away this May at the age of 79.
Fiction | Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal
‘It had been an early education, Nathu thought, in the fact that all history was historical fiction. A story had a longer life than a fact.’
An extract from Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal.
Archive | Children of the Earth by Henry Miller
‘What about the fate of our children … is there nothing to be done for them?’
This essay by Henry Miller was originally published in the July 1959 edition of The London Magazine.
Guide | JLF London at the British Library
‘Our London iteration is a vibrant affirmation of multilingual literary connectivities. At this volatile moment of change and transformation, we seek to make sense of our fractured world, and to explore and understand it through our shared stories.’
Namita Gokhale on JLF London 2025 at the British Library.
Interview | ‘Whose freedom would you sacrifice for your own?’: Performing The Crucible in 2025
‘It’s an obvious thing to say but bad things happen when people are afraid, oppressed and silenced. If we could only take heed of the lessons that history has attempted to teach us.’
Hannah Saxby and Phoebe Pryce discuss performing Arthur Miller’s The Crucible in 2025.
Archive | Verandah by Derek Walcott
‘the sunset furled / round the last post, // ‘the flamingo colours’ of a fading world, / a ghost steps from you, my grandfather’s ghost!’
From 1965, poetry by Derek Walcott.
Essay | ‘It was over; thank Heaven—over’: Reading Mrs Dalloway in a Post-Pandemic World
‘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.