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.

One of the original Beats, Michael McClure was back in London for the first time in thirty years and gave an exclusive reading at the Bookshop.

Robert Chandler reads from his newly-published translation of Nikolay Leskov’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk on which the libretto of Shostakovich’s opera is based.

On the day following press night at the National Theatre, Alan Bennett spoke at the London Review Bookshop about The History Boys. The play asks questions about history and how it should be taught, and about education and its purpose.

To celebrate the publication of Carcanet’s new anthology of the New York School poets, editor Mark Ford, poets Lee Harwood and Sarah Maguire, and translator Piotr Sommer read selections from the new collection.

In one of the first events held at the Bookshop, Mary Beard and Robert Irwin squared up to each other to debate the relative greatness of two magnificent structures, the Alhambra and the Parthenon.