Events at the Shop

Over its five 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.

Tariq Ali’s sold-out event at the Bookshop presented an insightful picture of Pakistan’s long and complex reationship with the West, and in particular with the United States of America.

Fiction on a Pedestal – the London Review of Books event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival

For the first time since being labelled a “snakeoil salesman, an ingrate and a hypocrite” for his opinions on the international presence in Afghanistan, Rory Stewart spoke at the Bookshop about international intervention and ‘Afghanistan rhetoric and reality’.

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.

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.