Hot, hot, hot . . . very early in the morning, before the factory whistle, but, even at this hour, everything shimmers and quivers under the attack of the white, furious sun already high in the still air.
As I write, the temperature in New York City is 86° F. The relative humidity is 56, the winds are south-westerly at seven mph, visibility stands at six miles. What do those numbers really...
David Benedictus is the Editor of Readings for BBC Radio’s Book at Bedtime. His Sunny Intervals and Showers is ill-suited for late-night reading, since it is not good to have the mind...
Not long after the First World War, the movie baron Samuel Goldwyn set up a stable of Eminent Authors in an attempt to give silent screenplays more literary weight. One of the recruits was the...
The last day of June 1858 was a warm day, though not the hottest of that summer. Two weeks earlier the temperature in London had reached 90 degrees, the highest ever recorded. Even so the...
If climate change is not only inevitable but already underway, how are we to live with it?
Summer morning reading from the LRB archive by Angela Carter, Eleanor Birne, Steven Shapin, Tom Crewe, Patrick McGuinness and Jenny Diski.
Writing about authoritarianism by Mary Beard, James Meek, Linda Colley, Walter Laqueur, Hilary Mantel, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Lloyd Parry.
Writing about mystery, the unintelligible and that for which no words can be found by Jenny Diski, Jacqueline Rose, Adam Phillips, John Lanchester, Alice Spawls and Hal Foster.
Writing about anarchism in the LRB archive by Steve Fraser, Susan Watkins, T.J. Clark, Zoë Heller, Hal Foster, Wes Enzinna and Jessica Olin.
Writing about how (not) to commit fraud by Walter Benjamin, Deborah Friedell, Daniel Soar, Vadim Nikitin, Steven Shapin, Pooja Bhatia, James Lasdun, Bee Wilson, John Lanchester and Robert Marshall-Andrews.
Writing about political corruption from the LRB archive by Peter Geoghegan, Paul Foot, Deborah Friedell, Conor Gearty, Eliane Glaser, Perry Anderson, Simon Jenkins, Jenny Diski, Uri Avnery and Sidney Blumenthal.
Writing about myth and the stories we tell ourselves by Margaret Anne Doody, Marina Warner, Mary Beard, Anne Carson, James Davidson, Tom Shippey, Joanna Kavenna, Lorna Sage and Michael Wood.
Writing about dog/human bonds by Rosa Lyster, Hannah Rose Woods, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, Iain Sinclair, Michael Burns, Anne Carson, Alison Light, Frank Cioffi, Amia Srinivasan and Jenny Turner.
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