THE LONDON MAGAZINE: Despair – its causes, symptoms and consequences – becomes something of a theme across the issue. At least according to its etymological root, to despair is to be without hope (de-sperare), and in Mavis Gallant’s 1965 story ‘Paola and Renata’, published in the issue, mothers have no hope of controlling their inscrutable, insolent daughters.

Review | Comfort and Its Discontents by Devki Panchmatia

‘While it must be stressed that Rankine’s lyric practice is capacious and stylistically thrilling, that her insights are always valuable in isolation, I am left slightly unsure of what Triage’s greater intentions are.’

Essay | The Scale Against Poetry: Tony Harrison’s Prose by Dane Holt

‘Partly due to critical neglect, partly due to the single-minded determination to be a poet who survived on nothing but his poetry, Harrison’s prose is doomed to be a footnote in his career.’

Essay | It’s a Devil of a Gap by Alex Niven

‘Might there be something, beyond backwater nihilism, in the vanishing of the Tree at Sycamore Gap that speaks to us about a country increasingly unable to protect its social and civic structures in the most basic ways?’