For People Who Devour Books

The Current Issue

July 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.

July 2026, Issue 553 Richard Carwardine on Abraham Lincoln * Jonathan Keates on Napoleon III * Martin Vander Weyer on the first US depression * Levi Roach on Rome and Christianity * Michael Burleigh on Nord Stream * Peter Moore on Patrick O’Brian * Peter Thonemann on Homer’s afterlife * John Stokes on Chekhov’s juvenilia * Stephen Smith on Cuba * Richard Smyth on Britain’s mountains * Miranda Seymour on childhood memories * Jennie Erin Smith on butterflies * Charles Darwent on Duchamp in New York * Rupert Christiansen on Stephen Sondheim * William Keegan on Brexit * D J Taylor on Simon Raven * Antony Spawforth on Alexander the Great * Tom Cook on typesetting * Norma Clarke on an artistic friendship * Simon Nixon on a corrupted Britain * Charlie Louth on Paul Celan * David Anderson on terrorism * Mark Glancy on movies * Paddy Crewe on Doireann Ní Ghríofa * and much, much more…

Richard Carwardine

Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln

By Matthew Pinsker

During the tumult of the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln happily declared that ‘he was a party man and did not believe in any man who was not’. This remark to a conservative Democrat, and the allied belief of a radical Republican that ‘no man was ever more firmly or consistently the representative of a party than was Mr Lincoln’, are not quoted in Matthew Pinsker’s fine study of the 16th president’s political formation and party practice, but they capture the spirit of this important book. Pinsker’s title is arresting... read more

Jonathan Keates

The People’s Emperor: The Unlikely Rise and Spectacular Fall of Napoleon III

By Edward Shawcross

Of all the dominant actors on the mid-19th-century scene, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was the most charismatic and divisive. Admittedly he had nothing of that physique du rôle which a nation traditionally demands of its leaders. ‘The Emperor is extremely short’, noted Queen Victoria after their first meeting at Windsor Castle, ‘but with a head and a bust which ought to belong to a much taller man.’ Yet though Prince Albert dismissed him as merely ‘a walking lie’, she herself was won over quickly enough by her guest’s deep-layered charm, with its touch of flirtatiousness. ‘His love-making’, noted the foreign secretary... read more