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.
When I made my First Communion, a famously bitter Catholic aunt of mine took me into a side-chapel of our church. She wrapped me up in her arms, right in the middle of all her perfumery, straightened my red sash, and told me I was ‘blessed, blessed, blessed’. Then out of her bag she handed me a wooden crucifix with a luminous lime-green Christ glued onto it. ‘It’s from The Grotto,’ she whispered. ‘Keep it beside you.’
The abduction and murder of James Bulger, a two-year-old boy from Liverpool, has caused unprecedented grief and anger. Hours before the two ten-year-old boys accused of the crime arrived at South Sefton Magistrates’ Court, a large, baying crowd had formed outside. As a pair of blue vans drew up, the crowd surged forward, bawling and screaming. A number of men tried to reach the vehicles, to get at the youths inside, and scuffles spilled onto the road. Some leapt over crash-barriers and burst through police cordons, lobbing rocks and banging on the sides of the vans. Many in the crowd – sick with condemnation – howled and spat and wept. Kenneth Clarke has promised measures to deal with ‘nasty, persistent juvenile little offenders’. Those two little offenders – if they were the offenders, the childish child-murderers from Walton – were caught on camera twice. First, on the security camera at the shopping precinct in Bootle where they lifted James, and again by the camera of a security firm on Breeze Hill, as they dragged James past – the child clearly in some distress.’
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 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...
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...
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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