A weekly journal for literature and ideas. We publish book reviews, book extracts, essays and poems by leading writers from around the world. Each week, we also review the latest in fiction, film, opera, theatre, dance, radio and television.

6 days ago · In this week’s TLS. Jean Strouse’s Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers argues that the almost certainly homosexual American painter had an outsider’s affinity with the artistic Jewish Wertheimer family with whom he became close friends.

Nov 15, 2024 · In this week’s TLS. Novels that make the Booker prize shortlist often get overlooked in the TLS’s Books of the Year feature.This year, however, Percival Everett’s reimagining of Huckleberry Finn, James, received more nominations than any other

Jan 24, 2025 · In this week’s TLS. Can the life be separated from the work? Paying tribute to the capaciousness, depth and forensic brilliance of T. S. Eliot’s criticism in his lead review of The Collected Prose, edited by Archie Burnett, Stephen Romer argues that these volumes represent a …

Nov 8, 2024 · In this week’s TLS. Contemplating his likely end, Vladimir Putin’s gadfly opponent Alexei Navalny joked that his memoir, Patriot (reviewed by Wendy Slater), was bound to be a bestseller – “The book’s author has been murdered by a villainous president; what more could the marketing department ask for?”

Since 1902, we have been publishing expert reviews and insightful, sometimes provocative essays by the best writers from around the world. We cover everything from The Tempest to the climate crisis; little magazines to Big Tech; The Rite of Spring to the Arab Spring; Dionysus to Diane Arbus.. Every year, we review 1500 books – that’s more than the London Review of Books, Literary Review ...

6 days ago · Sargent and the Wertheimers; American sexual history; the essence of Bob Dylan; English cooking; new poems – and much more.

Oct 4, 2024 · In this week’s TLS. Poor Cyril Tourneur. This didactic writer of the early 1600s was once regarded as the author of The Revenger’s Tragedy, a mighty work of its kind – and Tourneur therefore figured (in the words of Harold Jenkins) as “one of the most fiery and energetic imaginations possessed by any Elizabethan writer”.

Oct 25, 2024 · In this week’s TLS. In Polis, Ma argues that in the “classical” period celebrated by western poets and historians, the Greek cities reached their nadir, not their peak.Vicious class war and 100 years of violent intercity competition and empire-building disfigured this …

“Viva il Papa!”, somebody shouted at the Vatican on Saturday, after the handle of Pope Francis’s walking stick broke and he stumbled. But such warm sentiments are, as we know, far from universal. Only on Friday it was reported that an Italian priest, Father Natale Santonocito, had been excommunicated after describing Pope Francis as the […]