Critical thinking, published every fortnight.
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London Review of Books
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‘New York City is riding high. Fat Joe, the Bronx rapper, has called it “the greatest unification of the city since 9/11”. Legions of casual Knicks supporters are now dedicated fans; those of us who were already devotees have become entirely possessed.’
Arvin Alaigh:
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ju...
‘Labour didn’t see its supporters as communities to be mobilised, but voters to be canvassed and then left alone. Scottish Labour was always better than British Labour at pretending this divide didn’t exist.’
Rory Scothorne on Labour in Scotland.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘸𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘩 was the book that did most to validate liberals’ emerging confidence that a republican US could promote the peaceful development of global constitutionalism.’
@jonparryhis.bsky.social on 19th-century historian, MP and ambassador James Bryce
.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
’On 20 June, two thousand activists from across Europe and beyond will gather at Westminster Central Hall for a conference to oppose the growing atmosphere of militarism. But don’t expect to see anything about it in the papers or on TV.`
@desfreedman.bsky.social:
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ju...
‘Most scoring systems are not really games at all. They are means of reducing the variety and complexity of human experience into a version that is easier to package up and parcel out.’
David Runciman on keeping score.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘Anti-vaxxers have grown more emboldened since Covid, but they are still very much a minority. Most parents want to immunise their children. Often missing, though, is a sense of vaccination as a public good.’
Edna Bonhomme (@jacobinoire.bsky.social) on the blog.
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ju...
‘A breviary was a portable set of tools for performing the whole set of daily worship rituals throughout the Church year. It sounds dry, but – once more – the illustrations to these breviaries were magnificent.’
Ardis Butterfield on medieval illuination.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘My favourite Western writers embraced style over melodrama, foregrounded Native American culture and explored the lives of women. Surely Larry McMurtry wasn’t for me.
As it happens, this misapprehension plagued McMurtry for his whole career.’
@jrobertlennon.com:
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘Members of ethnic minority communities have asked their white friends to accompany or drive them to work, hoping it would reduce the risk of being targeted. With more protests announced for today, schools closed early.’
Luqman Saeed in Belfast, from the blog.
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ju...
‘Benjamin Myers’s characters dug and they worked the land and they fought and they snared rabbits, and they were rendered in prose that aspired to the sparse behaviourism of Cormac McCarthy. You could call this constellation of interests “masculinity”.’
Jon Day:
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
I’m following the NBA Finals thousands of miles from midtown Manhattan. In my North London flat, I set the alarm for 1...
