The TLS 2014

By TOBY LICHTIG

One of the many joys of digital technology is the flexibility it gives us editors to present our content in different ways. Last year, to celebrate the launch of the TLS app, we put together a selection of pieces from 2013 in a free digital edition. Now we are, by what I like to think is popular demand, doing it again.

The TLS 2014 issue takes in a broad sweep of what we do: from neuroscience to classics, anthropology to literature and the performing arts. It is by no means comprehensive, but the idea is to give a flavour of the range of topics that we cover – and different voices in which we do so.

Articles in this free issue include Adam Thirlwell on the infinite selves of Philip Roth, Lorna Scott Fox on the strange and strained relationship between Mr and Mrs Borges, Eimear McBride on the “extreme vulnerability” at the core of Agota Kristof’s writing, and Janet Currie on Helen McDonald’s H Is for Hawk, a highly popular TLS book of the year and a “touchstone for future memoirs, bibliomemoirs, and writing that deals with the natural environment and the self”.

Original poetry includes Clive James’s magisterial, elegiac “Rounded with a Sleep” and Rachel Hadas’s equally brave and beautiful “Poetreef”. Elsewhere, John Kerrigan considers the “stupendous late-spring flowering” of Geoffrey Hill, Peter Thonemann reflects on Herodotus and the birth of history, Mary Beard enjoys a decidedly non-Euripidean production of Medea, and Nat Segnit applauds 10:04  – Ben Lerner’s “breathtaking” follow up to Leaving the Atocha Station (“rarely has a contemporary author’s second novel so triumphantly consolidated the first).

For many, this selection might be an opportunity to catch up on some pieces you’ve missed over the past year. And for those new to the paper – or occasional readers – we hope it whets your appetite for more of the serious, informed, critical, witty and diverse comment and opinion that is at the heart of what the TLS is all about.

So download, enjoy, and we hope it gives you some pleasant – and stimulating – diversion over the festive period.