Events at the Shop

Over its six years, the London Review Bookshop has hosted an outstanding events programme, with readings, debates and conversations heard by packed houses. Nearly all these events have been recorded for the Bookshop by archivists Common Custom, and we are delighted to be able to make a small selection of these recordings available on this site.

This list will continue to grow over time. If you find you’ve missed another sell-out event, do check back here to catch up.

On the day of publication of Taking Pictures, Anne Enright confessed to a full house at the Bookshop that “I can’t tell you how relieved I am not to be reading about suicide”, before reading from the new collection.

In typical full-throttle style, Žižek takes the opportunity to hit back at criticisms of Violence published in the LRB and elsewhere, and to expand on both his work and that of other philosophers.

Although best known in the English-speaking world for his autobiography I Saw Ramallah, Mourid Barghouti has published 14 volumes of poetry. After treating the audience to a reading from his work in both English and (briefly) Arabic, he answered a range of questions from both the audience and Ruth Padel, focusing primarily on the political background to his work.

Shortly after its publication, Andrew O’Hagan reads from Be Near Me, his powerful third novel on cultural clash between an English priest and Scottish village society.

Iain Sinclair spirals outwards from the centre of London as he reads from and discusses Edge of the Orison, examining family history and the disintegration of middle England through the prism of John Clare’s Journey out of Essex.

David Hare free-associates on politics, theatre and writing, inspired by his collection Obedience, Struggle and Revolt.

The actress and political activist Betsy Blair discusses Hollywood in the 1950s, her marriages to Gene Kelly and Karel Reisz, her tangles with the Blacklist, her adventures in Europe and the writing of her memoir, The Memory of All That.