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 […]
Dido and Aeneas by Jeffrey Meyers
Autumn in Venice: Ernest Hemingway and His Last Muse, Andrea di Robilant, Atlantic Books, 348 pp. £17.99 (hardback). Andrea di…
Archive | Breakfast with Borges by Andrew Graham-Yooll
First published in The London Magazine March 1983, Vol.22, No.12 Jorge Luis Borges entered the Pedmonte Restaurant on Avenida de Mayo with…
Review | The Snowman at The Peacock Theatre
This Christmas, join the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in their magical rendition of Raymond Brigg’s The Snowman. Christmas would not be…
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.’
Interview | Cradeaux Alexander
American video and performance artist Cradeaux Alexander presents a mid-career retrospective this month at Bow Arts, London. Jemima Walter met…
Archive | Memories of Modigliani by Anna Akhmatova
First published in the August 1964 edition of the London Magazine (Vol. 4 No.5) (translated from the Italian text by…
Archive | Fiction | Silvio by Arturo Vivante
First published in the June 1970 edition of The London Magazine (Vol. 10, No. 3) Like a statue too…
Archive | Poetry | Peter Bland
Peter Bland, the New Zealand writer and actor, has written extensively over his long career, and has been lauded with…
Fiction | On His Own Ground by Vis Nathan
First published in the December 1976/January 1977 of The London Magazine (Volume 16, No.5) Gopal entered his cubby-hole surrounded…
Review | Promising Young Women by Caroline O’Donoghue
This year has truly brought to the fiction scene some of the most stunning and powerful female characters. From the…
Confessions of an English Opium Eater: An Essay by David Punter
Before its controversial and ground-breaking publication as a book in 1822, Thomas De Quincey’s autobiographical account of opiate addiction Confessions…
My London by Maggie Butt
I was born, brought up and have lived most of my life in London, and it fits me like a…
Old mother moor by Sarah Westcott
Old mother moor is bitter – peat is the thinnest of comforts the bedrock is recalcitrant as teeth moor like…
Kleist Single Malt by Konrad Muller
Riding He tried to be a soldier. Seven years he spent in the Guards, seven years he described as irredeemably…
Seeing Robert Lowell Plain
Pushed by professors I came to hear him read, peered down upon a greying shock of hair to catch…
A Walk Through Rackham Land by Steven O’Brien
Ideally, if you go into Rackham Land you should go on your own. Take a deep breath and walk. Don’t…
Homage to Dufu’s Cottage
Translated by Kailan 1. Thirty years ——- I walked from this side to the other side of summer thirty…
A Gamble with People and Money
Summer Opera, 2017 (Glyndebourne Festival, The Grange Festival, Grange Park Festival at West Horsley, Garsington Opera at Wormsley, Opera…
The Ribbleway by John Gimlette
Wild horses wouldn’t get me to central Lancashire for a bank holiday–or so I thought. In fact, all it took…
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