Essays Archives - The London Magazine

Image of Virginia Woolf with a cover of Mrs Dalloway

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.

'Wanderer above Sea Fog' by Caspar David Friedrich, a 19th century depiction of a man experiencing the sublime

Essay | What Would the Romantics Say? by Lee Hatsumi Mayer

Essays

‘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.

Image of Marie Thompson and the cover of Bodies of Sound.

Essay | Low-quality Sonic Snapshots by Marie Thompson

Essays

‘Personal assistants are typically imagined to be female – it is a role that has historically been undertaken by women. Likewise, many of the smartphones’ various ‘assistants’ are gendered as female – they are part of a long historical lineage of robotic femininities.’

An extract by Marie Thompson from Bodies of Sound: Becoming a Feminist Ear.

Essay | Notes on Context by Callum Tilley

Essays

‘Entwining deeply personal stories into a tense political context allows for the exploration of the effects of this context at an individual level that, while fictionalised, is also infused with reality.’

Callum Tilley on politics in art.

Essay | Izabela the Valiant: The Story of an Indomitable Polish Princess by Adam Zamoyski

Essays

‘The joy of taking on a subject not previously covered by historians is that one can approach it with an open mind, uncovering and assessing virgin sources like an archaeologist.’

Adam Zamoyski on Izabela Czartoryska.

Essay | ‘Everything Shapes What It Encounters’: On the Life and Work of John Burnside by Tom Branfoot

Essays

‘As he writes in The Music of Time, ‘to make a poem at all is an act of hope’, for a future in which somebody is present, attending to the music and the craft.’

Tom Branfoot remembers the late John Burnside.

Essay | Pareidolia by Tallulah Griffith

Essays

‘I guess maybe that’s called haunting, that magic pull of things akin to those in our glass boxes, things that cannot last.’

New writing by Tallulah Griffith.

Essay | Giving Up by Christiana Spens

Essays

‘All at once, it felt nihilistic and misguided. I had been on this extended fast, but it was devoted to absent men and not any real god. As such, there had been no revelation or resolution, no peace.’

Christiana Spens on Lent.

Essay | One Hundred Years of Nijinska

Essays

‘Both contemporary pieces seek to build on this revolutionary choreography rather than imitate it perfectly, yet both acknowledge that Nijinska’s work marked key developments in the world of choreography, bridging the gap between one century and the next in the world of classical dance. So how did it come to pass that now she is known primarily as a keeper of her brother’s career?’

Esmee Wright on Bronislava Nijinska.