Closer to Rude than Snide

Criticism is not a secondary form of creation but a distinct craft, Leo Robson argues in this conversation with Leonard Benardo. Tracing its flourishing after World War II through a generation of charismatic public intellectuals who made criticism both glamorous and culturally consequential, Robson rejects nostalgia for a lost age of critical authority. One of Britain’s most distinctive literary critics, Robson is assistant editor at Literary Review and writes regularly for the New York Times, New Left Review, The New Statesman, and other publications. He is also the author of the novel The Boys (2025).