‘Gondal provided Brontë with a great deal of practice in profiling varieties of extreme behaviour. This is a world in which people conduct themselves with Byronic abandon, regardless of gender.’

David Trotter on Emily Brontë:
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

‘Though irreligious, I have a great attachment to images of the Annunciation, perhaps because it feels possible to project myself back to being a believer in front of this primal image of the moment the world changed for ever.’

Julian Barnes:
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

Extraordinary essay by Eyal Weizman Forensic Architecture - on the links between genocide in #Gaza & German colonial genocide in South-West Africa; on 'what it means to speak truth to repressive powers, and what are the consequences of such acts'.
Must-read:
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

‘Unwanted children feature prominently in Comyns’s work, as do children who are neglected, abused, endowed with supernatural powers, disruptive, imaginative and periodically violent.’

Rosemary Hill on the life and novels of Barbara Comyns:
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

Great joy for all!

Subscribe now: mylrb.co.uk/TW0424

‘It was Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government that made the call. They couldn’t have got it more wrong.’

James Meek on why England’s water system is unfit for purpose:
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

‘Improbably enough, one of the Wager’s sailors was called William Robinson Cruzoe – if he hadn't deserted ship before it sailed, there might have been a real-life Crusoe among those marooned in the South Seas.’

Fara Dabhoiwala on an 18th-century mutiny:
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

‘“A tiger doesn’t proclaim his tigritude,” Wole Soyinka said. “He pounces.” But négritude was the animating spirit of Fesman, which was a huge success.’

Sean Jacobs on competing claims to African culture in the postcolonial era:
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

‘The voluminous transcriptions of his seminars are studded with so many paintings that they themselves present an imaginary exhibition.’

Francis Gooding on Lacan and visual art:
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

A fascinating and poignant podcast about the trial + execution of James Pratt + John Smith, the last men to be executed for sodomy in England in 1835 with ⁦Tom Crewe⁩ following his review of Chris Bryant’s book in the ⁦London Review of Books⁩ podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the…

‘One of the structures that underpinned medieval European culture was multilingualism.’

Marion Turner on translation and language in the global Middle Ages:
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

‘A Western defence official I spoke to described the promotion of the mass rape narrative as a “military communications strategy” intended to keep up morale in the army, especially among reservists.’

Azadeh Moaveni on violence against women:
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

‘On its privileged fringes, the Gulag medical service retained strikingly Soviet characteristics.’

Sheila Fitzpatrick on the history of doctors in the Gulag:
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

‘24 per cent of the world’s superyachts – defined as a pleasure craft more than thirty metres long – are owned by citizens of the United States.’

Laleh Khalili 🇵🇸 on superyachts as a measure of inequality:
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

‘Breuil was a committed Catholic priest, and he promoted the idea that cave paintings were evidence of a universal religious longing that was to find full expression in Christianity.’

Stefanos Geroulanos on prehistomania:
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

‘Today’s readers are quick to believe or disbelieve; 16th-century audiences were conditioned to suspend disbelief so as to be delighted or admonished by a story.’

Malcolm Gaskill on the meaning of miracles in the early modern period:
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

This by Gareth is about as good a summary of the present situation as you’re likely to find anywhere lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/apri…

‘Oyeyemi frequently returns to questions about where meaning originates, about our differing accounts of the same event, the same text.’

Sarah Resnick on the novelist Helen Oyeyemi:
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…