Issue 48.05 is now online, featuring:
Andrew O’Hagan on Andrew Windsor
Susan Pedersen on Epstein
Nicholas Spice on Schubert
@shreir.bsky.social on Chantal Akerman
@tomstevenson.bsky.social on the war on Iran
and Joanna Biggs on Solvej Balle.
Read online now at www.lrb.co.uk
‘Claims that Iran must be prevented from having a nuclear weapon can have nothing to do with the rationale for war except as emotionally potent misdirection. A more plausible immediate motivation for the war was vulgar opportunism.’
@tomstevenson.bsky.social on Iran:
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
On the myth of the post-Cold War "peace dividend" (in Britain) www.lrb.co.uk/blog/
‘The cultural and ethnic heterogeneity of northern Syria was a good reason for political autonomy from Damascus. But whatever happens, the days of the SDF as a multiethnic coalition are over.’
@tomstevenson.bsky.social on the end of Rojava, from the blog.
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ja...
In the final episode of our ‘Aftershock’ podcast, @danielsoar.bsky.social is joined by Patrick Cockburn, @lalehkhalili.bsky.social and @tomstevenson.bsky.social for a live discussion.
What is the legacy of America’s ‘forever wars’ in the Middle East? Listen here:
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/e...
‘The US desire to annex Greenland is traceable to at least 1867 and the ambitions of the secretary of state William H. Seward, who negotiated the Alaska purchase that same year.’
@tomstevenson.bsky.social on Trump’s Greenland fixation, from the blog.
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ja...
The @financialtimes.com columnist @edwardluce.bsky.social has argued that in annexing Greenland, the US ‘would kill Nato in one swoop’. But would it? Trump appears to think Europe’s leaders are cowed enough to accept even this. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ja...
Issue 48.01 is now online, featuring:
@tomstevenson.bsky.social on Xi Jinping
David Runciman on Kamala Harris’s memoir
Colm Tóibín on Yeats, Auden and Eliot
Chal Ravens on Britney Spears
Tony Wood on Trump’s invasion of Venezuela
and a cover by Jon McNaught.
Read online at www.lrb.co.uk
In the new @LRB, I wrote about Xi Jinping and his father. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘During the Cold War, US-sponsored regime change was most often carried out at arm’s length. The kidnapping of Maduro seems to follow an older model, closer to the gunboat diplomacy which saw US troops occupy Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua between 1900 and 1934.’
Tony Wood
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
On the anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine, the White House issued a proclamation celebrating trade deals in Latin America and the restoration of ‘privileged access through the Panama Canal’. The US, it said, would always decide destiny in ‘our hemisphere’. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/de...
Our new issue 47.16 is now online, featuring:
@tomstevenson.bsky.social in El Salvador
Kasia Boddy on Dorothy Parker
Seamus Perry on Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce
Ruby Hamilton on David Lynch
and Emily Witt (@embits.bsky.social) on the manosphere.
Read online at lrb.co.uk
‘Calling himself the “coolest dictator in the world”, the restorer of the state monopoly on violence has replaced the state and seized the monopoly for himself.’
@tomstevenson.bsky.social on El Salvador under Nayib Bukele: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
In the new @LRB, I went to El Salvador, where Nayib Bukele has mopped up the gangs and set up Washington's favourite prison state. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘A friend was reading to me one day from 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘴 and I misheard a line as “the senses have wind.” They did, they do.’
@tricialockwood.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Iran's nuclear programme is mainly a diversionary justification for this attack - not a motive.
Issue 47.11 is now online, featuring:
William Davies on right-wing TikTok
Andrew O’Hagan on Joan Didion
Tom Crewe on Ocean Vuong
Francesca Wade on the librarian Belle da Costa Greene
Jenny Turner on Olga Tokarczuk
and a cover by Lola Bunting.
Read online at
www.lrb.co.uk
In 2019, a group of scientists led by Owen Toon, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, modelled the climatic effects of a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan in 2025. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ma...
In the new @londonreview.bsky.social, I wrote about the decipherment of the 4000 year old Linear Elamite script by François Desset www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
In the new @londonreview.bsky.social, I wrote about Hamas. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
In the new @londonreview.bsky.social, on Assad's fall, the post-Arab Spring era, and Turkey's and Israel's opportunism www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘The problem with painting Trump as the harbinger of the end of an enlightened international order is that it prompts the question of what that order is really like.’
Tom Stevenson on Trump and US power, online early from our next issue: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
In the new LRB, I wrote about Trump, who has more in common with his domestic opponents than they like to admit.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
In the new LRB, I wrote about how Israel has replaced much of Gaza with an uneven igneous landscape of black-grey mounds. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
