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.

BETTER THAN EVIL

The Critic

THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS GIFT! • A PRINT & DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTION TO THE CRITIC

Playing nice hasn’t worked • Even when I keep quiet about being cancelled, the censors don’t invite me back. So I might as well tell the truth about that too

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

Who rules: judges or parliament? • A domestic bill of rights is not necessarily the panacea its adherents intend it to be

Woman About Town

NOVA’S DIARY

DEAR TORIES, WHAT IS YOUR PLAN FOR THE ARTS? • This open letter to the Conservatives asks whether they have the will and the vision to take an opportunity to reshape British culture by reforming the Arts Council

Go woke, go broke • A presidential contender has lessons for UK investors

THE CATHEDRAL AND THE MUSEUM • With declining attendances and a neglect of their core mission, churches and art galleries have much in common. To survive, they must ignore fads and focus on what truly matters

BRITAIN: A GONER WITH THE WIND • The dash for wind energy is a generational folly that will see the nation’s economic future sacrificed on the altar of Net Zero

The road to Wigan’s tears • The Church’s drive to remake itself has been a pastoral and financial catastrophe

Israel at war: but where will it end? • Hamas knew its unprecedented attack would provoke ferocious retaliation and hopes the violence spreads

Orbán: guardian of liberal freedoms

Delilah Sampson Conceptual Artist

Italo Calvino’s imagination spanned the cosmos but his concerns were very human, writes John Self

LEWIS THE PROPHET • The Narnia author deserves to be remembered as a seer and a sage

The Critic Profile Rory Stewart • The cerebral Old Etonian podcaster might be a deep thinker and was possibly even a spy but he lacks the substance to be a great political leader

SCHOOL FOR FUTURE TORY STARS • Andrew Gimson recalls the “bohemian efficiency” of the unit that has honed the political skills of generations of Conservative big beasts

EVERYDAY LIES WITH THEODORE DALRYMPLE

America’s alarming debt trap • The soaring US debt-to-GDP ratio could have major global consequences

HERE WE GO AGAIN • William Norton considers the striking similarities between the tired, unoriginal politics of our age and those of the turbulent 1970s

Time to outlaw the Tories

FANFARES FOR THE COMMON MAN • Communist composers tried to create ideologically pure works for the workers — but without any great degree of success

Rock ’n’ roll dreams • A mere 46 years after his last gig, aspiring rock god D.J. Taylor dusts down his guitar and heads into the studio to record that difficult first EP

Adam Dant on …

STUDIO • The complexities of architectural reconstruction in Berlin

A Boy’s Own book of anti-colonialism • Yuan Yi Zhu is a writer, academic and The Critic’s law columnist

Why a great artist stopped painting

God is in the details even of secular history

Just a little note to say “I hate you”

Fighting back against the IRA mob

From Hegel to Hollywood

Buried trésor

The tangled roots of the Third Reich

A history of the world set in stone

Moving tribute to a richer time

A teenager, strangers and a pair of apes

Spare us the wagging finger • Few things are more tedious than books moralising about the deficiencies of...