The Critic

The Critic is Britain's new highbrow monthly current affairs magazine for politics, art and literature. Dedicated to rigorous content, first rate writing and unafraid to ask the questions others won't.

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The Critic

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Letters • Write to The Critic by email at letters@thecritic.co.uk including your address and telephone number

Judging the judges • Are Appeal Court judges always superior jurists? The jury is out …

Woman About Town

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Chatting the chat • AI promises to be a boon for business, but new tech doesn’t magically bring more profits

HOW OFCOM SIGNED OFF ON CHANNEL 4’s LIES • David Elstein says the regulator was complicit in a misleading C4 documentary about the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya

Don’t bulldoze the bungalows • Andrew Orlowski says the think tank-driven Street Votes policy risks trampling on middle-class dreams by bringing high-density housing to peaceful neighbourhoods

Hole lotta love for non-binaries

The God of war • FRED SKULTHORP explores the rise of religiosity and mysticism among those fighting on both sides of the conflict in Ukraine

Blessed are the poor? Really? • The C of E is rich but chooses not to fund parochial ministry in impoverished parishes

A tale of two Glastos • DAVID BUTTERFIELD says that with ho-hum bands, faux-eco fans and sky-high prices, Glastonbury Festival has strayed far from its countercultural roots

Stocking the trophy cabinet • Britain’s rich store of status symbols is a key driver of foreign investment

AI: is the end nigh? • Laura Dodsworth evaluates the threat to mankind from artifical intelligence

EVERYDAY LIES WITH THEODORE DALRYMPLE

Theodore Dalrymple on the disgrace of Didier Raoult, the scientific giant who touted a worthless Covid “cure”

The Mighty Quinn • DRAWN FOR THE CRITIC BY JAMIE COE

The Critic Profile Tobias Rustat • A Cambridge college tried to remove his memorial plaque and the Church branded him a “slave trader” but, in fact, this royal retainer was a philanthropist

IN A WORLD WITHOUT GOD, WHAT DOES SUICIDE MEAN? • When society no longer sees the taking of one’s own life as a sin, it is unclear who should be responsible for attempting to prevent such deaths

Mark Scrivener Literary freelance

Big pay rises won’t beat inflation • The poor are best helped through tax and benefits, not boosting the minimum wage

OUR TRUE EUROPEAN HOME • With Brexit settled, Britain must seek to engage with its unalterably European cultural heritage and identity

A FORGOTTEN BRITISH GREAT: SMELFUNGUS • Now languishing in undeserved obscurity, Tobias Smollett should be remembered for his series of edgy novels whose vicious wit, vivid characterisation and skewering of hypocrisy made him a firm favourite of — and influence on — Charles Dickens

Kill or be killed: the charming cut-throats of the wild frontier • Paul Raffaele visits the site of a long-forgotten siege in the Hindu Kush

Adam Dant on …

STUDIO •  The Venice Architecture Biennale

Searching for a radical alternative

The deep humanity of books

The lovelorn lady who broke the rules

All aboard the ship of self-improvement

Deconstructing the decolonisers

Appreciating the small and recherché

All action, no abstraction

Missing a slam dunk

A stirring tale of delicious complexity

Why central Europe has always mattered

Bastards of the fleet

A brilliant biography of an elusive genius

Holiday reads by the recently departed

What book blurbs really mean •...