‘Flushing in Shango’s honour I brood on punishment and love, and invoke his epiphany, here and now, in Britannia, bold but gentle, brave but neutral, an orisha in touch with the dead, the living and the yet to be, and with only double axes to grind.’
From 1970, Tony Harrison on Cuba and Shango.
‘The most beautiful, most human traits are contained in the Odyssey. In Rome, when I had finished about half of the Portrait, I realised that the Odyssey had to be the sequel, and I began to write Ulysses.’
James Joyce in Zurich, 1917.
‘There is no such thing as a reliable narrator, and efforts to achieve real truth often destroy it.’
Harriet Armstrong interviews Aea Varfis-van Warmelo.
The London Magazine Short Story Prize 2026 is now open.
The winning stories will be published in future issues of The London Magazine. Winners will also receive cash prizes and be celebrated at a prize-giving ceremony at the end of the year.
We are delighted to announce that Camilla Grudova, Tim MacGabhann and Ayşegül Savaş will be this year’s judges for the prize.
‘My friends, when I was in love / It was many years ago / I did not share the same earth / With other mortal beings.’
From 1956, three early poems by C. P. Cavafy.
‘I have had a great sorrow; and my heart is not one of those that can, without a bitter pang, transpose into the past that which (be it even a mere object) was as you once were, the predilection of their present and the hope of their future.’
An unpublished letter by Marcel Proust.
‘How do you write silence? That’s what I’m trying to do. How do you write death before you’ve experienced it? That’s what I’m trying to do.’
Luke Dunne interviews Victoria Chang.
‘What am I to do? Shall I conquer an empire? Shall I build a temple? Shall I write a poem that will endure longer? The fragmentary nature of action saps my inclination to act, and every victory is merely a broken mirror in which I cannot see the whole of myself.’
From 1956, an archive piece by Marguerite Yourcenar.
‘A water company running up debts to enrich its investors is permissible, but a government that borrows to invest in the public realm, not so much.’
Sruti Basak interviews Hettie O’Brien.
‘Why would you do that – visit cemeteries?’ is a sentiment often expressed to me, voicing some kind of disgust, as if I did something like, I don’t know, collect vomit.
Konrad Muller interviews Mariana Enriquez.
‘While it must be stressed that Rankine’s lyric practice is capacious and stylistically thrilling, that her insights are always valuable in isolation, I am left slightly unsure of what Triage’s greater intentions are.’
Devki Panchmatia on Claudia Rankine.
‘Partly due to critical neglect, partly due to the single-minded determination to be a poet who survived on nothing but his poetry, Harrison’s prose is doomed to be a footnote in his career.’
Dane Holt on Tony Harrison’s underappreciated prose.
‘Might there be something, beyond backwater nihilism, in the vanishing of the Tree at Sycamore Gap that speaks to us about a country increasingly unable to protect its social and civic structures in the most basic ways?’
Alex Niven on the Sycamore Gap and cycles of decline.
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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.
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.
‘This is where I say to any budding writers out there: write historical fiction!’
Gurnaik Johal on The London Magazine Podcast.
‘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.
The London Magazine has a publication history spanning almost three hundred years, and has featured work by some of the most prominent names in literature, from John Keats to Hilary Mantel. In this curated selection, we share our favourite pieces from the TLM archive.
‘Flushing in Shango’s honour I brood on punishment and love, and invoke his epiphany, here and now, in Britannia, bold but gentle, brave but neutral, an orisha in touch with the dead, the living and the yet to be, and with only double axes to grind.’
From 1970, Tony Harrison on Cuba and Shango.
‘The most beautiful, most human traits are contained in the Odyssey. In Rome, when I had finished about half of the Portrait, I realised that the Odyssey had to be the sequel, and I began to write Ulysses.’
James Joyce in Zurich, 1917.
‘My friends, when I was in love / It was many years ago / I did not share the same earth / With other mortal beings.’
From 1956, three early poems by C. P. Cavafy.
