About the London Review of Books

The LRB is Europe’s leading magazine of books and ideas. Published twice a month, it provides a space for some of the world’s best writers to explore a wide variety of subjects in exhilarating detail – from culture and politics to science and technology via history and philosophy. In the age of the long read, the LRB remains the pre-eminent exponent of the intellectual essay, admired around the world for its fearlessness, its range and its elegance.

As well as essays and book reviews each issue also contains poems, an exhibition review, ‘short cuts’, letters and a diary, and is available in print, online, and offline via our app. Subscribers enjoy unlimited access to almost 15,000 articles in our digital archive. Our website features a regular blog and a channel of audio and video content, including podcasts, author interviews and highlights from the events programme at the London Review Bookshop.

History

The London Review of Books was founded in 1979, during the year-long management lockout at the Times. In June that year, Frank Kermode wrote a piece in the Observer suggesting that a new magazine fill the space left by the temporary absence of the Times Literary Supplement. The first issue of the LRB, edited by Karl Miller, appeared four months later. It included pieces by Miller and Kermode, as well as John Bayley on William Golding and William Empson on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and poems by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney.

Edited by Mary-Kay Wilmers since 1992, the LRB now has the largest circulation of any magazine of its kind in Europe (2016 ABC: 70,468) and offices in London and New York.

London Review Bookshop

Alive with the same independent spirit as the magazine, the London Review Bookshop’s impeccable taste, evangelical booksellers and blockbuster programme of author and panel events have made it the city’s favourite place to pass the time in the company of writers and readers. Find us in Bloomsbury, two minutes from the British Museum.

London Review Cake Shop

Enter through the Bookshop and discover some of central London’s most imaginative sandwiches, salads and cakes, a deadly serious selection of teas, and a 21st-century expression of the city’s famous coffee house culture.

LRB Limited is registered in England as No.1485413 at the following address: 28 Little Russell Street, London WC1A 2HN, UK.