Andrew O’Hagan is the LRB’s editor at large. He is the author of seven novels – Our Fathers, Personality, Be Near Me, The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, The Illuminations, Mayflies and Caledonian Road – and four books of non-fiction: The Missing, The Atlantic Ocean: Essays on Britain and America, The Secret Life: Three True Stories (which contains his LRB pieces on Julian Assange, creating a fake identity online and the search for Satoshi Nakamoto) and On Friendship.
His first piece for the LRB, a Diary about James Bulger’s murder and the cruelty of children to other children, appeared in 1993, when he was working as an editor at the paper (in 2010 he wrote about Jon Venables’s rearrest). He has written more than a hundred and fifty pieces for the LRB since then, on subjects including begging, the sinking of his grandfather’s ship, the murder of the Irish solicitor Rosemary Nelson, Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, the end of British farming, Jonathan Franzen, hating football, Scotland’s sense of grievance, the Democratic and Republican National Conventions of 2004 and the Republican one of 2024, poetry anthologies, the 7/7 bombing outside the LRB’s old offices, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, what happens to our rubbish, a driving holiday with Seamus Heaney and the LRB’s first editor, Karl Miller, Jimmy Savile and the BBC, Norman Mailer, the Daily Mail, the Grenfell disaster, Robert Louis Stevenson in Bournemouth and in Edinburgh, old Soho, the New Romantics and Prince Harry.
In the days of disco and Aramis 900, when the relationship between entitlement and sleaze could still seem novel, Prince Andrew came across like the more relatable sort of wanker, high on royal privilege but in touch with the inner life of the standard British male. ‘If he wasn’t a member of the royal family,’ the astrologer Russell Grant said, ‘his ideal role would...
On 9 February this year, Elon Musk, then in charge of the US Department of Government Efficiency, posted a message on X calling for a number of American media outlets to be closed down. He criticised, among others, the public service broadcaster Voice of America, which began transmission in 1942 with ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’. ‘Daily, at this time,’ the...
On 6 December 2000, during a snowstorm, Joan Didion was sitting in the waiting room of an office in Manhattan reading a copy of National Geographic. She was lost in an article about polar bears and their cubs and regretted having to stop reading when her therapist called her into his room. Roger MacKinnon, who was then 73, was a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst once described by the New York...
On the eve of the first lockdown, I made my way to the Hammersmith Apollo to attend a performance by Whitney Houston. It was a chill, ominous night and the people outside the venue were wide-eyed and excited about their forthcoming encounter with the undead. I had come along in the course of my duties as a hopeless necromantic. I don’t think I have ever believed that pop stars and...
Ionce witnessed Stephen Spender being evil in a London club. A mandarin of poetry, he seemed almost fluorescent with stories and vital resentments, twisting the stem of his glass as he offered opinions about Sergei Diaghilev and the Maharishi, with stop-offs at T.S. Eliot, Judy Garland and the queen mother. I had no time to roll my eyes because I was busy concentrating and trying not to...
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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