For People Who Devour Books

The Current Issue

June 2026

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‘This magazine is flush with tight, smart writing.’
Washington Post

Literary Review covers the most important and interesting books published each month, from history and biography to fiction and travel. The magazine was founded in 1979 and is based in central London.

June 2026, Issue 552 Peter Moore on George Forster * Anne Perkins on the Balfour family * William Whyte on British dons * Ian Thomson on the fall of the USSR * Joe Moshenska on Spinoza * Jeremy Treglown on Juan Carlos of Spain * D J Taylor on Henrietta Moraes * Howard Davies on recession * Martin Vander Weyer on Goldman Sachs * Piers Brendon on disinformation * Richard Vinen on Kissinger * Bettina Bildhauer on medieval health * John Mullan on Emily Brontë * Joseph Hone on Jonathan Swift * Duncan Fallowell on Lady Chatterley * George Cochrane on Eric Ambler * A J Lees on neurorehabilitation * John Phipps on Dante * Stephen Smith on stolen art * Caroline Moorehead on wartime love * Norma Clarke on cooking for one * Nigel Andrew on birds * Olivia Ho on M John Harrison * Philip Womack on Shakespeare’s neighbours * and much, much more…

Peter Moore

The Traveller: The Revolutionary Life of George Forster and his Search for Humanity

By Andrea Wulf

An exemplary tour of the High Enlightenment might go something like this. You’d begin in the streets of 1760s London to feel the pulse of Georgian commerce. You’d then hop aboard one of Captain Cook’s colliers and cruise through the Pacific, having encounters every day. Returning to Europe you might watch Benjamin Franklin in diplomatic action at Passy and dine with Casanova in Vienna, before sailing up the Rhine with Humboldt. Having inspected the Soho Manufactory in Birmingham and admired the picturesque scenery of the Peak District, you’d cross the Channel just in time for the grand and bloody finale in Paris. Only this isn’t a fantasy. This... read more

William Whyte

Twilight of the Dons: British Intellectuals from World War II to Thatcherism

By Colin Kidd

Arriving as an undergraduate at Cambridge in 1961, Terry Eagleton was both overawed and underwhelmed by his supervisor, a man he calls Greenway in his memoir. ‘Greenway was the first truly civilised man I had ever encountered,’ Eagleton recalls. ‘He knew all about cheeses, wisteria, Rubens’s... read more