Andrew O’Hagan is the LRB's editor at large.
For scholars of heartbreak and trepidation, the Dolly Parton songbook is a core text. No other singer would say ‘please’ when begging Jolene not to take her man. In Country Music, Ken Burns’s recent documentary series, Parton insists a great song is like an heirloom or a keepsake, essentially a piece of storytelling. A well-written song can dramatise a wonderful character...
What I most wanted was a SodaStream. A person with a SodaStream was in charge of his destiny to a pretty awesome degree. Same with the Breville sandwich toaster. Instead of a slice of Scottish Pride smeared in beef paste, you could go your own way, killing it softly, taking over the kitchen and incinerating a few squares of plastic cheese and a bit of ham in a sarcophagus before hitting the...
At the rehearsals for Cinderella, the choreographer was clapping out the beat while ten young dancers jumped and twirled. It was a festival of Nike socks, North Face joggers, Calvin Klein T-shirts and scooped up hair. It wasn’t a Glasgow I’m accustomed to seeing. The hall was littered with pumpkins, baskets of apples, a trolley with three geese sticking out of it. There was a...
The paintings from all the provinces of Joan Eardley’s working life – decaying tenements, lost youth with the sweet wrappers of Rottenrow pasted in, summer fields with the grasses of the Catterline fields mixed in, stormy seas, winter snows – amount to a consistent vision of life’s overwhelming flux.
As we wait with bated breath for Prince Harry’s memoirs, we might take a moment to consider the royal adverbs. In the days of Lilibet I, the favourites were, in no particular order, ‘jollily’, ‘spiffingly’, ‘thrillingly’ and ‘boringly’. It’s not yet clear how involved Lilibet II will be in palace matters but, under the influence of...
In his introduction to our twelfth LRB Collection, Sisters Come Second, Colm Tóibín writes that most siblings dream of being only children. Malin Hay explores this idea with Colm and Andrew O’Hagan,...
Andrew O’Hagan talks to Tom about the power of defunct objects, from the life-enhancing gadgets of his childhood to Seamus Heaney’s fax machine, and the role lost things play in fiction.
Mary-Kay Wilmers, who retired as editor of the LRB last month, talks to Andrew O’Hagan about her career, first at Faber and Faber, then the Listener, then for 42 years at the London Review of Books....
Andrew O’Hagan talks to Thomas Jones about the friendship between Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry James, and the time they spent together in Bournemouth.
Andrew O’Hagan reads his piece about attending Karl Lagerfeld’s memorial in Paris.
We look back at 40 years of the LRB in our anniversary event at Conway Hall.
Andrew O'Hagan analyses Craig Wright’s failed attempts to prove he was Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin.
Andrew O'Hagan watches Craig Wright show Gavin Andresen that he holds the Satoshi key.
Mary-Kay Wilmers, Andrew O’Hagan and Ben Eastham talk to Sarah Howe about ‘Long-Form Essays in the Digital Age’.
Andrew O’Hagan describes his experiences trying to be Julian Assange’s ghost writer.
Andrew O’Hagan retraces Samuel Pepys’s infuriating journey to work and tries to cross Tottenham Court Road.
Andrew O’Hagan meets Norman Mailer just a few months before he died.
Andrew O’Hagan chaired this discussion between Linda Colley, R.W. Johnson and Tom Devine about national histories and the ways they should, and should not, be taught.
Andrew O’Hagan talks about his work for the LRB, from his first piece on the murder of James Bulger to his more recent essay on paedophile culture.
Mary-Kay Wilmers, editor of the LRB, talks to Andrew O’Hagan about her book The Eitingons, a story of the twentieth century told through the lives of her ancestors: a fur-trader, a psychoanalyst and...
About a third of the way through his first book, The Missing, Andrew O’Hagan pauses over a perception he thinks his readers may find ‘a bit surprising’. It’s an intricate...
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