The London Review of Books has become the most successful – and controversial – literary publication in Europe. Just what is Mary-Kay Wilmers, its 75-year-old editor, getting so right?
Mary-Kay Wilmers at the offices of the London Review of Books in Bloomsbury, London. Photograph: Katherine Rose for the Observer
The offices of the London Review of Books are situated on the top two floors of a Georgian townhouse in the shadow of the British Museum. To reach them, you either brave the claustrophobically small lift or walk up five flights of brown-carpeted stairs, before emerging in a light-filled room containing a scattering of terrifically bright people sitting at computers, surrounded by piles of books and an air of quiet industry.
The windows on one side of the large open-plan room overlook the nurses' accommodation for the nearby University College Hospital, where someone has left a carton of orange juice to chill on a window ledge. The LRB's editor, Mary-Kay Wilmers, likes this view. She enjoys "seeing what the nurses get up to". On the other side, the windows overlook a fine Hawksmoor church spire, with carved heraldic symbols of a lion and a unicorn at its base. Wilmers doesn't have as much time for this. Most people would proffer some admiring blandishment about architectural style – but not Wilmers. "They're too fat," she sniffs at the stonework animals. And looking at them, it's hard not to concede that they are, indeed, a bit flabby.
The opposing London vistas, and Wilmers' reaction to them, seem to sum up her approach to editing what is now deemed to be the most successful literary publication in Europe. At 75, Wilmers retains both an insatiable curiosity about people (the nurses) and a healthy disregard for received opinion (the church). Both qualities course through the pages of the London Review of Books which, under her 22-year editorship, has become a highly regarded publication with an influence that extends far beyond the rarefied world of small-circulation literary magazines.
The first issue: 25 October 1979
The windows on one side of the large open-plan room overlook the nurses' accommodation for the nearby University College Hospital, where someone has left a carton of orange juice to chill on a window ledge. The LRB's editor, Mary-Kay Wilmers, likes this view. She enjoys "seeing what the nurses get up to". On the other side, the windows overlook a fine Hawksmoor church spire, with carved heraldic symbols of a lion and a unicorn at its base. Wilmers doesn't have as much time for this. Most people would proffer some admiring blandishment about architectural style – but not Wilmers. "They're too fat," she sniffs at the stonework animals. And looking at them, it's hard not to concede that they are, indeed, a bit flabby.
The opposing London vistas, and Wilmers' reaction to them, seem to sum up her approach to editing what is now deemed to be the most successful literary publication in Europe. At 75, Wilmers retains both an insatiable curiosity about people (the nurses) and a healthy disregard for received opinion (the church). Both qualities course through the pages of the London Review of Books which, under her 22-year editorship, has become a highly regarded publication with an influence that extends far beyond the rarefied world of small-circulation literary magazines.
The first issue: 25 October 1979Founded in 1979, after the Times Literary Supplement was closed by a year-long industrial dispute, the LRB has a circulation of 64,038 (by comparison, according to 2013 Audit Bureau of Circulations figures, the Spectator has a circulation of 62,581 and the New Statesman of 28,495). The website attracts 575,000 visitors a month and there are a further 2,000 Kindle subscribers. At a time when most print publications are losing readers, the LRB's circulation is going up.
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