‘Papers speak through their writers. And of all the London Review’s writers Frank Kermode was the one through whom we spoke most often and most eloquently.’
– Mary-Kay Wilmers
Without Frank Kermode there would have been no London Review of Books. In July 1979, during the management lock-out at the Times, he wrote an article in the Observer calling for a new magazine to fill the gap left by the Times Literary Supplement. The first issue of the LRB appeared three months later. One of the reviews in it was by Kermode, of a book on popular millenarianism. Nearly 250 pieces would follow over the next thirty years, on subjects ranging from Paul de Man to Muriel Spark, from William Empson and the Renaissance to Jesus and sex. Here, for his centenary, are eighteen of the best, with a new introduction by Michael Wood, an afterword by Mary-Kay Wilmers and cover artwork by Jon McNaught.