London Review of Books

In the 1970s and ’80s, thousands of haemophiliacs in the UK were infected with HIV and hepatitis C through blood products known to be contaminated. In a recent piece, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithewaite outlines the magnitude of the scandal, exacerbated by carelessness, corporate greed and, in one instance, deliberate human experimentation. She joins Malin to discuss the findings and what...

When Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty of fraud last week, the only surprise was how quickly the jury reached their verdict. John Lanchester joins Tom to discuss how the former crypto billionaire ended up facing a life sentence, from his early career in finance and embrace of Effective Altruism to the simple but audacious nature of his crime, and why he found himself in a US court, even...

Anglophiles abroad love the British sense of humour – but what does that actually mean? In a recent review for the paper, Jonathan Coe takes a scalpel to the satire boom and its aftermath to find out what, if anything, sets British comedy apart. He joins Malin for a serious chat about comedy and its double-edged role in British political life.

Nineteenth-century Britain is often imagined as gloomy and dark, epitomised by Dickensian grime and Queen Victoria’s prolonged state of black-clad mourning. But in reality this period saw an explosion of colour, following a number of scientific discoveries.

In this short discussion, Charlotte Ribeyrol, co-curator of Colour Revolution, a major new exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in...

Mark Ford and Seamus Perry return for the final episode in their Close Readings series, Modern-ish Poets, looking at 19th and 20th century poetry. On the centenary of the publication of Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ in book form, Mark and Seamus consider how revolutionary the poem was, the numerous meanings that have been drawn out of it, and its lasting influence.This is the...

Arranging and rearranging a magazine’s layout before it goes to press is all done on computers now. But in the years before desktop publishing software, the work of cutting and pasting required a sharp scalpel, a parallel-motion board and plenty of glue.

As the London Review of Books celebrates its 40th anniversary, we look back at what paste-up used to involve in the...

In this feature-length documentary, Anthony Wilks traces the connections between the events of Hobsbawm’s life and the history he told, from his teenage years in Germany as Hitler came to power and his communist membership, to the jazz clubs of 1950s Soho and the makings of New Labour, taking in Italian bandits, Peruvian peasant movements and the development of nationalism in...