‘The practice of constitutional law has been politicised to such an extent that scholars now despair of being able to teach the subject at all. This is a desperate state of affairs.’

Martin Loughlin on America’s political quandary:
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

Helen Vendler ‘can write from inside a poem, as if she is in the workshop witnessing its making’, Tom Paulin wrote. James Wood called her ‘the most powerful poetry critic in America since Randall Jarrell’.

On the blog, a selection of her LRB pieces: lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/apri…

On the LRB podcast this week: in the last of our Winter Lectures, Terry Eagleton asks, ‘Where does culture come from?’. Listen ad-free on our website – lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-v… - or through your podcast provider of choice.

‘The Rwanda Bill is a different kind of legal fiction: not a tool of the courts that solves an injustice, but an assertion by Parliament that creates one.’

Nicholas Reed Langen (Nicholas Reed Langen) on the blog:

lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/apri…

always enjoy reading / listening to Eagleton just to see him distill the weight of his drilling in western intellectual history into such fluent + accessible material
lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-v…

“No UK government has put a court in a position like this before, forcing it to consider whether Parliament’s sovereignty extends to denying reality.”

I love Sophie Smith's essay about women philosophers in this issue of the London Review of Books. Someone Called Brian Replied could be the title of my email inbox-memoir

lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

‘Unlike the art​ to be found in churches and town halls, which was almost exclusively edifying, in the palaces of rulers paintings were soon associated with notions of culture and aristocratic taste.’

Charles Hope on painting in 15th-century Italy: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

‘He can be tactfully evasive in the 𝘓𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴, even two-faced. At other times he lets generosity spiral into “babble” that is designed to praise but also seems calculated to keep his networks sweet.’

John Kerrigan on Seamus Heaney: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

'Montenegro isn’t an example of state capture by organised crime. Rather, the cartels are an extension of the state. They are in contact with the state, they are shielded by it and they enrich the people who run it.'

A fascinating read on how Montenegro became a mafia state.

Sophie Smith (University College, Oxford (Univ)) asks about the role of intellectual history in perpetuating the prejudices faced by women in philosophy in the London Review of Books

lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

‘𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 has been described as a heist movie and a comedy. These labels are appropriate only if every bank robbery is a heist, and if we call films comedies when we can’t think of another word to describe them.’

Michael Wood: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…

‘In Hisham Matar’s fiction, everything is heavily foreshadowed. “We are living in the century of fear,” he has said, and his characters move in an atmosphere of impending catastrophe.’

Tim Parks on Matar’s 𝘔𝘺 𝘍𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/…