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London Review of Books @LRB

Europe’s leading magazine of politics, literature, history and ideas, published twice a month. Follow us on Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/lrb.co.uk

Joined March 2009
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London Review of Books@LRB
26 Mar 2025
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‘Musk offered to do to America just what he’d done for Twitter.’ Deborah Friedell on Elon Musk: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n06/…

Deborah Friedell · Delete the workforce: Musk’s Twitter Takeover

Trump praised Musk for being so good at firing people: ‘You’re the greatest cutter. I mean, I look at what you do....

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Issue 47.06 is now online, featuring: Perry Anderson on neoliberalism Tessa Hadley on Mavis Gallant Judith Butler on Trump’s anti-trans orders Long Ling on Beijing’s commuter city Deborah Friedell on Elon Musk and a cover by Jon McNaught. Read online at lrb.co.uk/
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Also in this issue: Ferdinand Mount on the Siege of Malta Peter Gordon on the new translation of Capital Alexander Bevilacqua on Ottoman Greece @DanielHCohen on the Barclay brothers Mary Hannity on Victorian orphans Thom Dyke on Guantánamo Bay…
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... Daniel Lee on D-Day Rosemary Hill (@misspegler) on Dora Carrington Julian Bell on drawing Blake Morrison on Abdulrazak Gurnah Michael Wood on Mickey 17 and a poem by @ae_stallings. Read now at lrb.co.uk/

London Review of Books

Europe’s leading magazine of ideas, published twice a month. Book reviews and essays (and much more online) renowned for their fearlessness, range and elegance.

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‘Twitter remains for now by some way the market-leader, but its use-value is fast vanishing, as even the more sluggish old-school news and comment organisations recognise.’ Mark Sinker (@HiddenLandsc8pe) on Bluesky, from December: lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/december…
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‘Withdrawing basic support from people who are not considered sufficiently ill or disabled risks making them more ill or disabled.’ Arianne Shahvisi on welfare cuts, from the blog: lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/march/a-…

Arianne Shahvisi | A Labour Thing to Do

The anthropologist Margaret Mead was just over five feet tall and had to stand on a suitcase to be seen above the...

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‘It’s not clear what message of common endeavour, if any, Starmer’s government is trying to broadcast. A commitment to growth above all else is inconsistent with slashing immigration.’ Daniel Trilling (@trillingual) on Labour’s immigration rhetoric: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n05/…

Daniel Trilling · Short Cuts: Labour’s Immigration Policy

Having ruled out any large-scale redistribution of wealth, Labour should be putting its changes to workers’ rights,...

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‘One very simple way to address a language model’s deficiencies in problem-solving is to express problems not as exercises in reasoning but in the generation of language.’ Paul Taylor (@paul3548) on DeepSeek and problem-solving AI: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n05/…

Paul Taylor · AI Wars

Deepseek was set up as a research initiative unconstrained by commercial imperatives, with the aim of achieving...

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Morten Høi Jensen@MortenHoiJensen
26 Mar 2025
This, by @danielsoar in the @LRB, is one of the best essays on The Brothers Karamazov I’ve ever read: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n04/…

Daniel Soar · Will I, Won’t I? Dostoevsky’s Kiss

It’s​ a big book, some say the best. Freud: ‘The Brothers Karamazov is the most magnificent novel ever written...

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‘In nearly thirty years of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, over six million people have been killed and more than seven million have been displaced.’ Issa Sikiti da Silva on disintegration in the DRC, from the blog: lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/march/di…

Issa Sikiti da Silva | Disintegrating Republic of Congo

Last month, the Rwanda-backed March 23 Movement set up shadow administrations in key areas it has conquered in the east...

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‘Before she reached her twenties, Austen imagined the wildest range of disreputable lives for her heroines and indulged her own resistance to conventionality. It isn’t hard to understand why.’ Freya Johnston on Jane Austen, juvenilia and marriage: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n05/…

Freya Johnston · Itch to Shine: Austen’s Suitors

The main business​ of almost all Jane Austen’s fiction is to portray that brief period in a young woman’s life...

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Follow us on Bluesky, where we’re ‘lrb.co.uk’: bsky.app/profile/lrb.co.uk Be first to read new pieces from the paper and on the blog, or listen to our podcasts. Find and follow LRB writers with our Starter Pack: bsky.app/starter-pack/lrb.co…
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‘Resentment at not being treated as an equal hasn’t gone away just because the Soviet Union is no more. Vladimir Putin took office in 2000 denouncing US “tutelage” and double standards.’ Sheila Fitzpatrick on Russia in the Cold War: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n05/…

Sheila Fitzpatrick · Not Corrupt Enough: Whose Cold War?

In American understanding, the Cold War was an ideological confrontation between freedom and democracy, on the one hand...

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‘Meloni and her lieutenants have tried to claim large chunks of traditional Italian culture: her former culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, hailed Dante as the father of right-wing thought.’ Jan-Werner Müller on Giorgia Meloni and the Italian right: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n05/…

Jan-Werner Müller · No one is further right than me: Mussolini to Meloni

Great significance has been attributed to the government of Giorgia Meloni, who became Italy’s prime minister in 2022...

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‘This government, like the last one, seems unable to put curiosity about causation before its impulse to cruelty.’ Arianne Shahvisi on the cuts to personal independence payments, from the blog: lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/march/a-…

Arianne Shahvisi | A Labour Thing to Do

The anthropologist Margaret Mead was just over five feet tall and had to stand on a suitcase to be seen above the...

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‘A hare can be a prince. Or a hare can be a hare. The only rule of a tale is that everything gets used, even apparently superfluous details – though you’re allowed entirely superfluous ogres because ogres are cool.’ Colin Burrow on the Grimms’ folk tales: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n05/…

Colin Burrow · Ogres are cool: Grimm Tales

 The only rule of a tale is that everything gets used, even apparently superfluous details – though you’re allowed...

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From 3 followers to 41,300. Follow us on Bluesky and make that 41,301: bsky.app/profile/lrb.co.uk

John-Paul Stonard@johnpaulstonard
18 Nov 2023
Good to see the @lrb on @bluesky, a good follow, to be sure.
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‘Without at least a twinge of belief, blasphemy turns into kitsch.’ Adam Mars-Jones on the French writer Dominique Fernandez, whose novels and memoir explore family, religion and his sexuality: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n05/…

Adam Mars-Jones · Worst Birthday Cake Ever: On Dominique Fernandez

In the new memoir as well as in L’Étoile rose Fernandez insists on the political dimension of homosexuality, the...

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‘There’s nothing surprising about Trump’s attack on the universities, or on the liberal law firms that he also despises. What is shocking is the ease with which his attack has so far succeeded.’ Adam Shatz on Columbia’s capitulation, from the blog: lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/march/su…

Adam Shatz | Submission

There’s nothing surprising about Trump’s attack on the universities, or on the liberal law firms that he also...

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