‘If From Life leaves the reader a little in the dark about what Berger was really like, though, this is not entirely Overton’s fault. Berger was, it seems, difficult to know.’
Aaron Labaree on Tom Overton’s biography of Berger.
The Hills Are Alive (with the Sound of Screaming) by Joey Connolly
‘The agents of technocapital imagine themselves as the new saviours of humanity, the new bringers of fire. Each imagines himself a little postmodern Prometheus. But Prometheus was punished.’
Joey Connolly asks why reality is screaming.
Puking Abadan: Dylan Thomas in Iran by Kasra Lang
‘Thomas spends much of his letters from Iran begging his wife to forgive his various infidelities. What’s sometimes lost in this personal story is that he had arrived in Iran at an extraordinary time, a period of high intrigue not only in the country’s history but in the wider drama of the twentieth century.’
Kasra Lang on Dylan Thomas’s 1951 trip to Iran.
The London Magazine Writing Retreat at The Mill, France
Next summer, join The London Magazine on one of two writing retreats at The Mill, France.
While our editorial team will be on hand throughout the week to lead workshops, facilitate conversations and offer one-to-one editorial feedback, the retreat is designed so that you can write at your own pace.
Latest
The Gentle Spiral by Yordan Radichkov
‘At that moment, he appeared like a man who no longer perceived life and nature around him as decorative curtains, but who was trying to break through this curtain or veil, to tear it, to peek behind it.’
Translated from the Bulgarian by Erag Ramizi, short fiction by Yordan Radichkov.
Among the Birchers by Nora Sayre
‘Certain as any astrologer that he knows what lies ahead, the Bircher feels a Titanic responsibility: to tell others about the Conspiracy.’
From 1972, a dispatch from the USA by Nora Sayre.
Paying Attention: An Interview with Nathan Dragon
‘I started to see that I was writing about the little things in life, or the little things in town, and I would relate that attentiveness to not liking change.’
An interview with Nathan Dragon.
Burning Love: An Interview with Pol Guasch
‘We tend to think of disaster as something that arrives with one overwhelming voice and destroys everything. And, of course, it does. But at the same time, people still have to love each other. They still have to find hope.’
An interview with Pol Guasch.
Formal Restlessness | Restless Formlessness: In Conversation with Terrance Hayes
‘Writing is lonely all the time. Sometimes you can get a little bit of fortification in groups, but never think that it’s not a lonely practice. There’s no organisation that’s going to take away that quality of loneliness.’
Finola Cahill interviews Terrance Hayes.
I Am Going to Read Aloud by Dylan Thomas
‘The printed page is the place in which to examine the works of a poem, and the platform the place on which to give the poem the works.’
From 1952, a speech by Dylan Thomas.
Diane Williams: ‘My form is my form.’
‘Early on I found that what was painful in my life, when objectified on the page, gave me a sensation of power.’
Heather Cass White interviews Diane Williams.
An Autumn Foreword by John Lehmann
‘And every year autumn brings as its aftermath more disappointed ambition, more vows to change one’s publisher, more accusations of favouritism against literary editors and critics, more homicidal indignation with booksellers than satisfied vanity or solid cash.’
John Lehmann in November 1954.
‘And We Too Love Football…’: The Bronze Gazelle and the Egyptian King by A. Naji Bakhti
‘When I recently bumped into the famed nephew of Jamal Khatib on the beaches of Beirut, five-thousand four-hundred miles from where we had last seen one another and over a decade later, it was his toothy grin I recognised first.’
A. Naji Bakhti on Jamal Khatib.
D. H. Lawrence In Bandol by Brewster Ghiselin
‘The value of his conversation lay less in the force of what was being said, for all its swift flexibility, diversity, colour, good sense, and constancy to a single vision of truth, than in the interest and charm of his presence, that this talk made articulate.’
From 1958, Brewster Ghiselin on D. H. Lawrence.
Ayşegül Savaş on Friendship, Motherhood and the Necessity of Solitude
‘I do think, perhaps naïvely, that literature should try to capture something that is essentially unsayable.’
Sruti Basak interviews Ayşegül Savaş.
The Boa by Marguerite Duras
‘I was horrified only by a certain sort of horror that might be described as moral: hidden thoughts and vices, unconfessed diseases, whatever is endured in shame and solitude, whereas I was not at all horrified by murder.’
From 1955, short fiction by Marguerite Duras.
Podcast
On The London Magazine podcast, we speak to brilliant writers, poets and artists about their craft, inspiration and career so far. New episodes every month.
Podcast | Ann Goldstein
Ann Goldstein discusses the oxymoron of the ‘celebrated translator’, her early encounters with Italian through Dante and the story of how she became Ferrante’s translator. Goldstein reflects on Ferrante’s unique syntax and style, as well as the broader challenges of Italian–English translation.
Podcast | Gurnaik Johal
‘This is where I say to any budding writers out there: write historical fiction!’
Gurnaik Johal on The London Magazine Podcast.
Podcast | Leo Robson
‘One of the things that the novel is about is different forms of chronology that we mark things by.’
Leo Robson on The London Magazine Podcast.
Archive
Among the Birchers by Nora Sayre
‘Certain as any astrologer that he knows what lies ahead, the Bircher feels a Titanic responsibility: to tell others about the Conspiracy.’
From 1972, a dispatch from the USA by Nora Sayre.
I Am Going to Read Aloud by Dylan Thomas
‘The printed page is the place in which to examine the works of a poem, and the platform the place on which to give the poem the works.’
From 1952, a speech by Dylan Thomas.
An Autumn Foreword by John Lehmann
‘And every year autumn brings as its aftermath more disappointed ambition, more vows to change one’s publisher, more accusations of favouritism against literary editors and critics, more homicidal indignation with booksellers than satisfied vanity or solid cash.’
John Lehmann in November 1954.
