Swift and the Normans lead the issue.
The November 13 issue of the Times Literary Supplement marks 300 years since Gulliver’s Travels first appeared in October 1726 and sold out within a week. Claude Rawson, a leading Swift scholar, takes the measure of the satire in his essay “Yahoos and Houyhnhnms,” and Sophie Gee’s “Gulliver in Twickenham” reviews the story of how Swift joined Alexander Pope and John Gay while writing his classic. In “Embroidered history,” Levi Roach visits the British Museum’s crowd-pulling Bayeux Tapestry exhibition and examines how the narrative of the Norman Conquest was shaped. The issue also brings the TLS Books of the Year 2026, in which contributors choose their favourites.
Fiction ranges from France to Norway’s forests.
The historian Richard Vinen’s “Watching the detective” reviews Philippe Jaenada’s L’Inconnue du quai de Javel, this year’s Goncourt-winning meditation on an unsolved murder, and Alice Blackhurst’s “Queen Margot’s allure” weighs a new Pléiade edition of Marguerite Duras. Beejay Silcox’s “Time-maxxing” considers a “mighty work of miniature” about connection, attention and hope, while Frances Wilson’s “Reality is sentences” explores the autofictional trilogy of a Finnish queer icon. Norway looms large: Lauren Kane’s “Among the pines” finds mourning, dreaming and theosophy in the country’s south, and Catherine Taylor’s “Mind and matter” follows an Oslo intellectual turned forest outlaw. Sukhdev Sandhu’s “How it goes” checks into a mysterious guesthouse where time seems to stand still.
The arts revisit giants.
Sarah Watling’s “Art for our sake” reviews a stage portrait of John Maynard Keynes, the economist who helped found the Arts Council, and the competing influences that shaped him. In “A giant of East and West,” Karolina Watroba weighs a new film about the Nobel laureate Thomas Mann, a novelist claimed by many cultures at once. Sue Roe’s “Moving in motes of light” savours Renoir’s open-air pleasures as the National Gallery brings his figures to London, and Harrison Stetler’s “Voices from Vichy” reviews a director’s film about the downfall of his great-grandfather in the Vichy years.
America’s fault lines come under scrutiny.
The sociologist David Garland’s “Out of hand” tallies the price Americans pay for their gun culture. D. K. Renton’s “Exit the workers” considers why America’s liberal elite has failed to find a new FDR, and Michael S. Roth’s “Grooming gazillionaires” examines how Stanford University has embraced shortcuts to riches. Together they sketch a nation wrestling with violence, inequality and the lure of quick money. Widening the lens, Benjamin Smith’s “Drug of choice” traces how the opium trade shaped the modern world.
Lives and poems turn personal.
Two memoirs open the Lives pages. Norma Clarke’s “A final bequest” reviews one about learning the truth about one’s parents, while Ysenda Maxtone Graham’s “Not-so-grand House” relishes a funny account of a frugal upbringing. In the Afterthoughts column, Nicola Shulman pursues “The elusive Dr Brookner,” the art historian and Booker-winning novelist Anita Brookner, and her knack for hiding in plain sight. The issue also carries two new poems: Victoria Chang’s “Fledge: Postscript” and Shane McCrae’s “The soldier.”
In Brief covers still more ground.
The eight short reviews range widely: Alev Adil on an inheritance of recipes and idioms, Nicholas Clee on a philosophical investigation into a campus murder, Hassan Akram on Robert Louis Stevenson’s romantic life and Roger Domeneghetti on football’s contradictions. Terri Apter reads a memoir interweaving motherhood and mourning, Douglas Smith follows the Nobel family through escape, industrial success and revolution, Eliza Tracey revisits the bookshelves of Wigtown, and Katherine Harvey surveys the scenes that most frightened medieval viewers. Crossword 1623 completes the issue. Read the full issue on the TLS website.
