Theo Todman's Web Page - Notes Pages

Animadversions

London Review of Books

(Work In Progress: output at 18/04/2025 14:26:53)

Introductory Notes

• This Paper is firstly just a way of recording time spent looking at the fortnightly London Review of Books. If I read long articles, and have something to say in response, these may get their own Papers, which will be easily found by looking at the pseudo-Author LRB. I had adopted this convention prior to undertaking this project.
• For 12 weeks from 23rd October 2024 I took advantage of the free introductory offer. However, I cancelled my DD before 14th February 2025 as £37.15 for 12 weeks (6 issues) is rather expensive. I could - it seems – have made a gift subscription last Christmas (2024) for a full year for £38.99 or 6 months for £22.99. The idea would have been to 'gift' it to Julie and then use it myself. However, it was still not worth it, so I didn’t.
• There's full access to 45 years' worth of issues at London Review of Books: Archive. They are not available on JSTOR, so I decided to grab anything worth having while I had access. Doubtless I’ve missed much – especially if the article titles are too obscure; I didn’t have time to follow every link. Then there’s the LRB Blog, which is doubtless also of value. I’ve ignored this for now.
• I looked through all past issues – up to the end of 2024 – and salted away pdf printouts of anything of interest for future investigation. I started at the most recent issues and expected that as I went further into the past, the number of relevant items would dwindle, and so the process would speed up. However, this wasn’t the case. I checked a few of the oldest volumes, and these still had many items of interest.
• On-going, I believe the archive allows you access to - say - three items a day before it asks you to subscribe or log in. So, I might have enough access in the future for what I need, but I think it gets pickier the more requests you make. If I don't retain this minimal access, I can always subscribe for a quarter.
• You might ask whether this is worth the bother. I'm finding it quite stimulating, and it's another angle on things. The articles seem to be of a higher academic and literary quality to those on Aeon¹, though there's less that is strictly philosophical. But now I'm 71 maybe I need to rein in all this rummaging for future reading material as there's not likely to be much future to read them in. Also, maybe it would be more sensible to scan the philosophy journals I have access to on JSTOR and other repositories that I have access to as a Cambridge alumnus. See Thesis – Journals². That or simply focus on the backlog of reading specifically for my Thesis³. However, I can’t resist!
• The stance of the LRB approximates to that of The Guardian, so is well left of centre. Whoever – doubtless several people over the 40-odd years – has come up with the titles for the articles has a keen sense of irony, and the general tendency is to ridicule and disparage anything that would have been deemed worthy of praise 50 years ago, let alone 100 years go. But it’s good to have your prejudices challenged, though it gets wearying after a while, and some contemporary prejudices could themselves do with challenging. A drawback of this LRB policy is that some important articles will go unread as their titles are obscure.
• For ease of access, I’ve set up the table below to all the issues in the London Review of Books: Archive up to the end of 2024. Those I’d not yet combed for items of interest were highlighted in yellow, but I’ve now caught up. I’ll follow this policy if I decide to look into issues in 2025+