For People Who Devour Books

The Current Issue

May 2018

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‘This magazine is flush with tight, smart writing.’
Washington Post

Literary Review covers the most important and interesting books published each month, from history and biography to fiction and travel. The magazine was founded in 1979 and is based in London.

May 2018, Issue 464 Michael Burleigh on the nuclear threats of 1983 * Laura Freeman on the lives of the surrealists * Ambrogio A Caiani on Napoleon's rise and fall * Keith Lowe on Operation Market Garden * Susan Owens on early still life * Piers Brendon on Prince Charles * John Burnside on addiction * Jack Stilgoe on space barons * Susie Orbach on motherhood * Anne Chisholm on William Trevor * Sarah Ditum on Sheila Heti * Donald Sassoon on modern Italy * Felipe Fernández-Armesto on Columbus's literary inheritor * Alex Goodall on the American Dream and America First * Laird Hunt on Kevin Powers * and much, much more…

Daisy Dunn

Aristotle’s Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life

By Edith Hall

Edith Hall, a professor of classics at King’s College London, tried astrology, Buddhism, transcendental meditation, psychotropic drugs and spiritualism before discovering Aristotelianism as an undergraduate. Aristotle appealed to her because he rejected the idea of divine intervention in human affairs in favour of scientific explanations for life and its phenomena. He was also considerably less miserable than the average philosopher. For Aristotle, Hall explains, ‘the ultimate goal of human life is, simply, happiness’. And who doesn’t desire happiness? In the tradition of Alain de Botton, she has written a practical and enjoyable guide... read more

Tobie Mathew

Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy

By Serhii Plokhy

If one were to hazard a guess as to the largest nature reserve in Europe, Chernobyl would be an unlikely contender. And yet, over the last thirty years, a vast area closed off to all but a few tenacious babushki, clinging to their contaminated homeland, has offered a haven to an extraordinary array of wildlife, from birds to wild boar. The survival... read more

Laura Freeman

The Lives of the Surrealists

By Desmond Morris

When Salvador Dalí came to lecture at the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936, he arrived with two Russian wolfhounds on leads. He wore a deep-sea diver’s suit and carried a billiard cue. A jewelled dagger hung from his belt. The subject of his lecture was ‘Paranoia, The Pre-Raphaelites, Harpo Marx and Phantoms’. The audience... read more

John Burnside

The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath

By Leslie Jamison

That Leslie Jamison’s account of her descent into addiction should begin with a chapter entitled ‘Wonder’ is a sure sign that this is a writer who knows what she is talking about. At the age of fifteen, drunk on stolen Chardonnay or stoned on pot at a swimming party, the thoughts that come immediately to her mind are... read more

Felipe Fernández-Armesto

The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Young Columbus and the Quest for a Universal Library

By Edward Wilson-Lee

‘Never mind,’ said the canon-archivist as the 16th-century paper crumbled at the reader’s touch. ‘Plenty more where that came from.’ Peter Russell, sometime spy and longtime professor of Spanish at Oxford, used to tell the story of his exchange with the venerable custodian of the Chapter Library of Seville Cathedral... read more

Jack Stilgoe

The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos

By Christian Davenport

In February this year, to much fanfare, Elon Musk propelled a car made by his company Tesla towards Mars. The Falcon Heavy made by his other company, SpaceX, is the world’s most powerful rocket, with three boosters and a capsule that, for this trip, contained the Tesla car but may in time transport astronauts... read more

Keith Lowe

Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944

By Antony Beevor

It’s an old joke that while the Americans always choose macho names for their military operations, the British appear to prefer names from a gardening catalogue. No Operation Urgent Fury for the Brits; instead we have Operation Primrose and, I kid you not, Operation Lentil. The most common butt of this joke is Operation Market Garden, the name the... read more