Many writers have played tennis: Nabokov, Frost, Pound, Hemingway, Theodore Roethke, Randall Jarrell, even Solzhenitsyn in Vermont and Martin Amis today. Like poetry, tennis has strict rules and requires technical skill. It is individual yet social, aesthetically pleasing, intellectual, at times erotic. Despite its formal rituals […]
Interview | Robert Lundquist: Never say sorry or common words again
My Father was a boxer. He taught me how to box when I was nine. This commonality, and the need to impress him, informed a great deal. When Charles Bukowski at an event asked me to ‘take it outside’ over a girl, I said okay. I was 21 and shy. Everyone at the party kept telling him […]
Review | Patience by Toby Litt
In every first-person narrative readers are ultimately trapped in the mind of the protagonist, doomed only to know what they know. In Patience, author Toby Litt takes this concept further by sharing the story of Elliott, who is himself trapped in his mind, as his disability inhibits most of his physical movement […]
Interview | Varun Grover: Of Paper Thieves and Nuclear Ducks
One of Varun Grover’s cats is called Chhenapoda, which translates to “Roasted Cheese” in English and is a beloved dessert from Odisha in eastern India. The writer and comic, who likes to name his favourite felines after confectionary, is perhaps best known instead for his biting satire […]
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 | On the Benefits of Dancing Naked in Public
In the pub, Jemima raises both her arms above her, then swings one back, turning her head to follow the arc it makes in the air. “Something like that,” she says, sitting back down and taking a chip from the plate between us.
We are attempting a reconstruction. What we are attempting to reconstruct is a theatre show called Trilogy, made by an artist called […]
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 […]
Review | La Fille du régiment at the Royal Opera House
Donizetti’s familial, romantic French comedy has its fourth revival in Laurent Pelly’s fabulous production at the Royal Opera House. The…
Spotlight V: Journals Edition | LE GUN / Hotel
The London Magazine has long been a champion of emerging writers and independent publishers, stretching back to the 1950s and…
Review | 58th Venice Biennale
Venice, that city of dreams and the inspiration for artists and writers from Turner to Italo Calvino, sees its 58th…
Archive | Apollinaire 1880-1918 by Simon Watson Taylor
‘Où êtes-vous ô jeunes filles’, sighed Apollinaire nostalgically, in a particularly inventive ‘calligramme’ sent from his army post in 1914. And the names he lists form the wings of a dove hovering above a fountain: Mia, Mareye, Yette, Lorie, Annie, Marie. These by no means comprise a roll-call of his youthful conquests, of course. Perhaps they were the only ones he found it convenient to remember at that moment, or perhaps those particular names just fitted nicely into the poem’s […]
Review | Il Trovatore at Teatro Real
Verdi’s Il Trovatore is notoriously difficult for opera houses to produce. Caruso once said that all you needed for Il…
Review | Giovanna D’Arco at Teatro Real
Verdi’s seventh opera, Giovanna D’Arco premiered in 1845 and tells the story of Joan of Arc, an exceptionally popular subject…
Review | Kiss My Genders & Urban Impulses: Latin American Photography from 1959-2016
Art endows people with the power to take control of their self-expression, to create themselves and identify themselves in a…
Essay | Introduction to Kamala Markandaya’s The Nowhere Man
The following essay is the introduction to the latest edition of The Nowhere Man, a novel by Kamala Markandaya, first…
Review | Group Hat and How Chicago! Imagists 1960s & 70s at De La Warr Pavilion
The waves come and go, breaking on the shore at their own singular pace. Grains of sand become whole under…
Review | Jellyfish at the National Theatre
Ben Weatherhill wrote Jellyfish specifically for the actress Sarah Gordy, and after seeing her incredible performance at The National Theatre,…
Review | Ten Years of Towner Art Gallery
The building itself is an intricate dance of angles, edges and corners; the colours and lines are a call to…
Essay | Low Fidelity: The Case for Shakespeare’s Reinvention by Katrina Bennett
Katrina Bennett Low Fidelity: The Case for Shakespeare’s Reinvention Perhaps more so than any other Elizabethan writer, William Shakespeare was…
Interview | Kevork Mourad: Seeing Through Babel
A new exhibition by the Syrian-Armenian artist Kevork Mourad is being staged at The Ismaili Centre, in partnership with the…
Fiction | The Prisoner by Tammye Huf
Tammye Huf The Prisoner I set my alarm clock for midnight, because at one in the morning we wanted to…
Review | Nan Goldin & Jenny Holzer at Tate Modern
In two exhibitions by Jenny Holzer and Nan Goldin currently on display at the Tate Modern we are presented by…
Review | Orange World and Other Stories by Karen Russell
Orange World and Other Stories, Karen Russell, Penguin, pp. 288, £14.99 (hardcover) Karen Russell’s third short story collection Orange World…
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