Times Literary Supplement

18/07/2024

Appetites for war; stories of Wales; posture panic; the morality of having children; q***r lexicography; writers on holiday – and much more.

This week’s TLS is out now: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/issues/current-issue/

18/07/2024

One week until the winner of the TLS Ackerley Prize at is announced at Reference.Point. Tickets available here: tinyurl.com/ana57ymp

17/07/2024

'Four of the top ten killers in the US today are chronic diseases linked to the Standard American Diet'

The food industry’s deadly impact on public health

About 150 years ago a family of starving Swedish tenant farmers boarded a ship bound for America and ended up in Nebraska – a state that had been admitted

15/07/2024

'We should be uncomfortable about a world in which health benefits accrue to the rich rather than being shared equally'

A provocative study of the weight-loss drug Ozempic

There is no mystery to long life: don’t smoke, don’t drink too much, get a good night’s sleep, stay active, stay married and eat a healthy diet, ideally

15/07/2024

'Just under the surface these essays add up to a picture of men and women living ordinary but none the less interesting and remarkable lives'

Collections of scholarly articles rarely receive much attention outside a narrow band of specialists. The collected papers of Ewen Bowie (E.P. Warren

14/07/2024

'The new political movements strengthened equality for the majority at the expense of minorities'

The pitfalls of political upheaval

On the eve of independence Thomas Paine assured American revolutionaries, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again … The birthday of a new

13/07/2024

'The Roman world experienced what Elliott calls a “catastrophe flip” – a small change that takes a system across a threshold that triggers a sudden crisis'

Rome and the world’s first pandemic

In 165 CE, Roman forces briefly invaded the Parthian Empire and occupied Mesopotamia. Ancient narratives tell us that the returning army brought back a

13/07/2024

'All too often the US opposed social democrats because it wrongly thought them communist dupes'

Latin America’s long battle between democrats and dictators

In March 1956 Jesús de Galíndez “disappeared” in the heart of Manhattan. A Basque nationalist who had opposed Franco in Spain, Galíndez had initially

12/07/2024

'Since Athens was at war for two out of every three years during the fifth century BCE, hearing epitaphioi would have been a familiar experience'

How funeral orations for the war dead shaped Athenian society

In ancient Athens it was the duty of every male citizen to fight in the army, and commemorating those who had laid down their lives for their city was a

12/07/2024

'Paintings of Friedrich in his Dresden studio show bare walls but for a couple of spare palettes, and no reference drawings'

The meticulous technique of a nineteenth-century great

“Friedrich, the most German of all German painters, has been forgotten by Germany”, wrote the Norwegian art historian Andreas Aubert in the Berlin journal

11/07/2024

'Henry VIII had a copy of the Venetian Talmud sent to England in the hope that rabbinical rulings might provide arguments for his divorce from Catherine of Aragon'

The rise and reinvention of a maritime superpower

In 828, Venice boldly affirmed its place on the Christian map of medieval Europe when a pair of knavish Venetian merchants stole the remains of St Mark

11/07/2024

Venice down the centuries; Delmore Schwartz’s poetic genius; on Ozempic; the pitfalls of political upheaval; Alice Munro’s complicity – and much more.

This week’s TLS is out now: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/issues/current-issue/

11/07/2024

'The marvellous ‘Two Public School Teachers’ shoot us a slightly weary gaze, as if we have interrupted them marking a stack of papers'

In 1924 the philosopher Alain Locke (1885–1954) commissioned Winold Reiss to illustrate a special issue of Survey Graphic announcing the “New Negro”,

10/07/2024

'What does it matter, then, if we do pick up “The Turn of the Screw” an hour or so before bedtime?'

Virginia Woolf on Henry James's ghost stories from the TLS of December 22, 1921

It is plain that Henry James was a good deal attracted by the ghost story, or, to speak more accurately, by the story of the supernatural. He wrote at least eight of t...

08/07/2024

'In 416, the two main contenders to be ostracized (Alcibiades and Nikias) teamed up against another candidate, Hyperbolos, and got their supporters to vote against him instead. Alcibiades and Nicias escaped scot-free and Hyperbolos went into exile. It was a classic case of what can happen when a two-horse race is changed into a three-horse race. So far as we know, with the genie out of the bottle, the Athenians never held another vote for ostracism again.'

The mismatch between the different political parties, in their share of the popular vote and the number of seats they actually won in the recent general

26/06/2024

We are pleased to announce the shortlist for the TLS Ackerley Prize 2024.

Join us for an evening of literary celebration, wine and music. Tickets are £5 (£3 for students/unwaged) and can be booked here: https://tinyurl.com/ana57ymp

25/06/2024

Our Poem of the Week is ‘Therimenes’ by Fergus Allen.⁠
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This poem was first published in the TLS of October 3, 2003 (issue no. 5244) and then in Gas Light & Coke (2006).

25/06/2024

'If there is any good that can come from this tragedy, it is that it might prompt us to pay closer attention to what miniature images can tell us about the ancient world.'

Mary Beard on Miniature Romans

It is several months since I have done one of my "hang on a minute" posts in reaction to some new and much-hyped archaeological discovery. But the

25/06/2024

Damon Galgut: 'It has been described as a masterpiece, and why would I not want to read an African masterpiece?'

Twenty-five TLS writers share their summer reading

Mary Beard I have a limited ambition for the holidays (a boat in the Aegean for me): one novel I’ve been meaning to read, and one work-related book that I

25/06/2024

“I guess I wanted to be a storyteller, but I wanted other people to finish the story.”

Lucy Davies on a Cindy Sherman retrospective – and a rare interview with the artist herself

If there is a single picture that captures the mysteries of Cindy Sherman, the subject of a stirring new retrospective at the Museum of Cycladic Art in

22/06/2024

What are Mary Beard, William Boyd and Damon Galgut reading this summer?⁠
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In this week's issue, twenty-five TLS writers share the books on their summer reading lists.⁠
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Read the full article here: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/regular-features/arts-books-roundups/tls-summer-books-list-2024/

21/06/2024

'Eight million Sudanese have fled their homes and 25 million are at risk from starvation.'

Lindsey Hilsum: A letter from Omdurman, Sudan

Rasheed Ahmed was fortunate to have left Omdurman before the mortar came through the roof of his house. A thoughtful man in his early fifties, wearing a

21/06/2024

'The threat of a German invasion was apparently less stressful than the threat of Stanley Spencer dropping by.'

Sarah Watling on a story of collaboration and artistic ruthlessness

Who counts as an artist? The curators of Dorothy Hepworth and Patricia Preece: An untold story at the Charleston gallery in Lewes have taken a generous

21/06/2024

'Cairo, Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad are now wastelands of defeated hope.'

Amir-Hussein Radjy on the poisonous legacy of Nasser, Egypt’s nationalist dictator

If there has been a single constant force in Arab politics over the past century, it has been the Palestinian problem. Much of Arab history in the

20/06/2024

Twenty-five TLS writers – including Mary Beard, Margaret Drabble, Libby Purves and more – share their summer reading

Mary Beard I have a limited ambition for the holidays (a boat in the Aegean for me): one novel I’ve been meaning to read, and one work-related book that I

19/06/2024

'The average time spent looking at a work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is seventeen seconds – so what is anyone getting out of this?'

Lisa Hilton on the relationship between ‘loveliness and lucre’

Is art a luxury or a necessity? Both these exceptionally accomplished books seek to answer the question, from very different perspectives. Bianca Bosker’s

19/06/2024

'Sally Bowles was Isherwood’s own boy—girl alter ego, his female double, sleeping her way to nowhere.'

Zachary Leader: Isherwood’s characters grew out of real-life experience

Christopher Isherwood died in 1986 in Santa Monica at the age of eighty-two. Ten years before his death, he found (or so he thought) the perfect doctor.

19/06/2024

The Summer Sale - broaden your horizons from just £1 a month⁠
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Subscribe today: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/buy/

19/06/2024

'People and events here have a peculiar, almost ethereal transparency, as though bathed in a medium where one thing permeates another.'

Our original review of Mrs Dalloway from the TLS of May 21, 1925 is now unlocked and free to read.

All Mrs Woolf’s fiction shows such an instinct for experiment that we may have to show cause why this new book should be called peculiarly experimental. Jacob’s Room, ...

14/06/2024

'No party really seems to think that the Arts and Humanities are central to how we talk and debate – central, in other words, to politics'

I don’t know who reads the party manifestos at a General Election, or indeed what they are for. I guess that, if a party thinks it might win the election,