The Politics of Reviewing

Nicholas Spice and Lucy Popescu in discussion, chaired by Rosie Goldsmith

In his essay “Confessions of a Book Reviewer”, George Orwell paints a humorous picture of a haggard figure in a moth-eaten dressing-gown, surrounded by dusty papers, cigarette ends and 
half-empty cups of tea, struggling to write 800 words on five totally unrelated books with “the heavy boots of his creditors clumping up and down the 
stairs”.

Is this image of the reviewer still true today? Is it possible to make a living by reviewing books? And, in an age of book blogging and readers’ reviews on Amazon, do we still need professional reviewers?

In this Authors’ Club discussion, chaired by the broadcaster Rosie Goldsmith, Nicholas Spice, publisher of the London Review of Books, and book reviewer Lucy Popescu will explore these and other issues, such as why certain books are reviewed in the national press and not others; who gets to review them, and why; and what is the reviewer’s function – to draw readers’ attention to good books they might otherwise overlook, to provide a balanced assessment of the latest book by a literary giant, or to debunk the pretentious? And is it easier, as Dorothy Parker said, to criticize a bad play or a bad book than to praise a good one?

Nicholas Spice has been publisher of the London Review of Books – Europe’s best-selling literary magazine – since 1982, and has written on topics such as fiction, classical music and psychoanalysis.

Lucy Popescu is the author of The Good Tourist (Arcadia), a guide to ethical travel, has edited anthologies for English PEN, and reviews books for the Independent, the Independent on Sunday, the TLS, The Tablet and Tribune.

Rosie Goldsmith is chair of the European Literature Network. As a BBC broadcaster, she travelled the world, from Libya to East Timor, covering events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall. She has presented flagship BBC radio shows including Front Row, Open Book, A World In Your Ear and Crossing Continents.