Thomas Jones edits the LRB blog, and presents the LRB podcast, from Orvieto.
Asummer storm in the Ligurian Sea can blow up out of nowhere. The Shelleys moved to the Bay of Lerici, halfway between Pisa and Genoa, at the end of April 1822. The place they rented, Casa Magni, was a former boathouse between the fishing village of Lerici and the even smaller hamlet of San Terenzo. ‘The sea came up to the door,’ Mary Shelley later wrote. ‘A steep hill...
On 2 and 3 June 1946 a referendum was held in Italy with a simple choice on the ballot: ‘republic’ or ‘monarchy’. On a turnout of 89 per cent – with not quite universal suffrage; men over 21 and women over 25 – the republic won with 54.3 per cent of the vote.
In 1982, when James Joyce, had he lived, would have turned a hundred, William Empson wrote a piece for the London Review of Books on ’the ultimate novel‘, which begins with some backhanded praise for Hugh Kenner – ‘it is wonderful how Professor Kenner can keep on about Ulysses, always interesting and relevant and hardly repeating himself at all’ – and then almost immediately takes issue with a ‘new idea’ of Kenner’s that ‘urgently needs refuting’. According to Kenner, Stephen Dedalus ‘is practically blind all through the book’; Empson demonstrates not only how that can’t be true, but also how Kenner came to fall into error. ‘The explanation is simple,’ Empson writes. But ‘this is not quite the end of it …’
The bespoke recording apparatus that Milman Parry took to Yugoslavia in the summer of 1935 – manufactured by Sound Specialties Inc of Waterbury, Connecticut, it had two turntables and a toggle for switching instantaneously between them – got me wondering about the history of such devices. Parry used his equipment for recording rather than playback, but it’s the same principle that later allowed generations of DJs to keep a dancefloor grooving indefinitely.
Miranda Carter talks to Tom about the history of the world’s longest-running interview show, Desert Island Discs.
Andrew Liu talks to Tom about the Chinese workers who followed the gold rush to California, Australia and South Africa in the 19th century, as described in a new book by Mae Ngai, The Chinese Question.
James Butler joins Tom to consider the fall of Boris Johnson, the candidates hoping to replace him, and what the next few years of British politics might look like.
Laura Beers and Deborah Friedell talk to Tom about the recent decision by the US Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson, which removed the constitutional right to abortion.
Bee Wilson talks to Tom about palm oil, which can be found in everything from pot noodles to shaving foam.
Madeleine Schwartz talks to Tom about the trial of twenty men accused of involvement in the Paris terrorist attacks of 13 November 2015, which left 130 dead.
James Romm talks to Tom about the site of the Ancient Greek games: the various contests in which athletes competed, the punishment for those found cheating, and the colossal statue of Zeus in whose honour...
Azadeh Moaveni talks to Tom about the situation on the Polish border, where women and children fleeing Ukraine face numerous dangers, including kidnapping, trafficking and forced labour.
Rupert Beale returns to the podcast to talk to Tom about the current state of SARS-CoV-2 in the UK.
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.
Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite talks to Tom about how events in the 1960s, including the Aberfan disaster and a shift in strategy by the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru, helped pave the way for devolution...
James Meek talks to Tom about the events leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, from the fall of Yanukovych to the wars in the Donbas and Nagorno-Karabakh, and considers what may happen next.
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