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‘Marcel Duchamp claimed that he had selected his readymades out of “visual indifference”, “a complete anaesthesia”, but obviously 𝘍𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯 was intended, in avant-gardist fashion, to shock.’
Hal Foster on the Duchamp retrospective at MoMA.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘At the King’s Gallery some three hundred items of clothing belonging to Queen Elizabeth II are displayed – headless, limbless, fleshless – like the remains of extinct animals.’
Susannah Clapp on royal frocks.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘It was James Bryce’s achievement, in 1888, to replace Tocqueville and to give the world an apparently scientific and mostly complimentary study of the American political system.’
@jonparryhis.bsky.social on the historian, MP and ambassador.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘Benjamin Myers’s Christology is founded on the sense of scandal, shock and outrageousness that Kinski, as a subject, brings with him. As he rants and struts about the stage, the crowd boo him and call him a fascist.’
Jon Day reads 𝘑𝘦𝘴𝘶𝘴 𝘊𝘩𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘒𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘬𝘪.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘I inherited my fandom from my father. When he landed in Brooklyn as a teenager, nearly fifty years ago, rooting for the Knicks was one of the ways he became American. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t a fan.’
Arvin Alaigh on how the Knicks are uniting NYC.
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ju...
‘Ecclesial life was so rich with sound in part because singing was intrinsic to learning to read: young children in monasteries, nunneries and cathedral schools were taught literacy through memorising the psalms.’
Ardis Butterfield on medieval psalters.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘After 1945, discontinuity and loss forced British people to adjust to a new sense of who they were and might yet become. Consciously and unconsciously, horror films zeroed in on the pain and perplexity.’
@malcolmgaskill.bsky.social on the horror classic 𝘋𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘕𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
London Review of Books
London Review of Books
London Review of Books
London Review of Books
‘Unlike most of the party’s senior figures, he had no direct connection to the trade union movement; indeed, he was sceptical of the value of organised labour, and uneasy when he was expected to defend industrial action.’
Malcolm Petrie on Ramsay MacDonald’s failure.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘Poets have notoriously, I think, teetered on the edge of feeling, rightly or wrongly, that the work that they do is a kind of higher vocation.’
Sandeep Parmar on poetry and work, in the first episode of a new series on the podcast, ‘Poetry and the Turning World’.
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...
‘By the end of 2025, Ethiopia reported record volumes of gold exports – 38 tonnes, worth more than $3 billion – and gold surpassed coffee as the country’s biggest export. But these figures are only part of the story.’
Claire Wilmot reports from Tigray.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
London Review of Books
London Review of Books
Podcast Episode · The LRB Podcast · 10 June · 1hr 5min
