Poetry | Letter to Bez by Chris McCabe
Bez, post-Victorian Boz, Viz incarnate / and Viceroy of the sinew, what is the name / for light that detracts from the stars? / Urban pollutants de-lux distant galaxies / as we walk after / parties through school fields, / via car parks, past vacant vats & waste lots […]
Essay | Come Back West, Magic Realism, We Need You Too
In 2016, Roisin O’Donnell published an article in The Irish Times which addressed the curious fact that so few Irish writers wrote in the magic realist mode. Putting in a plea for magic realism, she argued that “Ireland, with its healthy litany of bread-crusts-make-your-hair-go-curly superstitions, along with its hand-me-down myths […]
Fiction | We Can Be Friends by Lauren Sarazen
There was a cluster of coats and hats careening over the railing, and when I got closer I could see what they were looking at. The basin, which had been full of water the last time I’d passed, was drained to the dregs and men in coveralls and tall rubber boots were crawling around in the sludge […]
Essay | W.H. Auden: The Man Who Spoke for the Dumb by Patrick Maxwell
One of the hallmarks of a great artist is their often lugubrious disdain for their own work. The reclusive French composer Paul Dukas was self-critical to the degree that he only allowed fifteen of his works to be published. Needless to say, they have become much loved […]
Essay | Travel Writers as Citizens of Nowhere by Cecily Blench
At the Conservative Party Conference in 2016, shortly after the Brexit vote, the new Prime Minister Theresa May gave a speech in which she said these words: ‘If you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere’. She made this point while trying to address the concerns of those who voted for Brexit because of immigration […]
Extract | Twenty Theatres to See Before you Die by Amber Massie-Blomfield
Dido and Aeneas by Jeffrey Meyers
Archive | Breakfast with Borges by Andrew Graham-Yooll
Review | The Snowman at The Peacock Theatre
Essay | ‘Time to Murder and Create’: When Fiction Bleeds into Nonfiction by Mathis Clément
If I were to open by describing my setting as a desk piled high with old issues of The London Magazine, the wine red May 1960 issue face down on top, rust-brown rimmed teacup marking the narrow No Man’s Land between the pile and my laptop, you would assume I were telling the truth. If I were to add that the red reminded me of blood spilled last week in rage and the brown rimmed cup of the plughole down which that blood spiraled, you would assume I was either lying or mad.
Review | Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy and the Avant-garde at The Barbican
The centrifugal drive behind much of the work featured in the Barbican’s new exhibition Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy and the Avant-garde is enunciated by Rodin in the first gallery: ‘I express in a loud voice what all artists think. Desire! Desire! What a formidable stimulant.’
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