Literary Review, The

a periodical founded in Edinburgh in 1979 by Anne Smith, who remained editor until 1981, when she sold it to the publisher Naim Attallah. Under Smith's editorship the magazine published reviews, articles, short stories, poetry, and interviews; Anthony Burgess, Doris Lessing, Angus Wilson, William Trevor, Geoffrey Grigson, and David Lodge were among the contributors. In 1982 it absorbed Quarto and was henceforth published from London. Its reviewers included Derek Mahon, Michael Hofmann, P. J. Kavanagh, and Germaine Greer; poetry was contributed by Andrew Motion, David Harsent, Peter Reading, Edwin Morgan, and others. In 1986 the editorship passed to Auberon Waugh, whose wittily sceptical ‘From the Pulpit’ column introduces each issue. Under his direction the journal has been increasingly devoted to reviewing with the aim of being intelligently informative to the general reader and free of any political bias. Jeremy Reed, Colin Wilson, Paul Theroux, Tom Sharpe, Peter Levi, and Victoria Glendinning have been among the more recent contributors of reviews.