Overview

'There are few persons', Anthony Powell wrote in John Aubrey and His Friends, 'of whom it would be more true to say that they were interested in everything.' One might say something similar of the London Review of Books, or so we'd like to think. And it is our sense of spiritual affinity with the 17th-century antiquary - and pioneering archaeologist, folklorist, garden historian and biographer - that has inspired our Diary for 2026, the quatercentenary of Aubrey's birth. Specifically, the biographies contained in his most famous work, Brief Lives, of more than 400 illustrious near-contemporaries, notable for their precise, unvarnished and frequently bizarre and outrageous details. We'd like to think that something similar to that could be said of the LRB's best biographical pieces, too. Aubrey began with an index of 55 Lives and that is what you'll find here, animating each spread of the weekly planner with a paragraph or two of wildly revealing particulars that say all that need be said about the subject, or nearly. Some of these subjects are the same as Aubrey's, some are recurrent objects of fascination for the paper, and some are included mostly on the strength of the writing - by contributors including Neil Ascherson, Mary Beard, Alan Bennett, Anita Brookner, Angela Carter, Terry Castle, Penelope Fitzgerald, John Lanchester, Hilary Mantel, Ian Penman, Edward Said, Colm Toibin and Brandon Taylor.

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Reinventing itself with a completely new theme and original artwork each year, and charged with the same elegance and irreverence as the magazine, the LRB Diary (not to be confused with the column that concludes each issue) has become a must-have stationary status symbol for passionate readers in the UK and beyond. A weekly planner possessed by the spirit of literary genius, but also packed full of useful features, the LRB Diary for 2026 follows on from the Alan Bennett- and Kafka-themed editions of 2023 and 2024 respectively, and this year's London A-Z (and back again).

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