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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Happy to be a heretic • The less agreeable you are, the less it will bother you to dissent from your group’s orthodoxy

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

International law: the basics • When can states use lethal force against other nations—and with what weapons?

Woman About Town

NOVA’S DIARY

“Reputational risk” is rot • Business is obsessed by this pseudoscientific nonsense

WHITEHALL IN THE THICK OF IT • The Civil Service’s utter determination not to do anything ministers ask of it makes the Government’s work tricky

Why is there still no pandemic plan? • The Covid inquiry could help improve our response to the next crisis, but is not asking the right questions, argues

WE ARE PLANNING TO FAIL • Britain’s population is rapidly growing but the authorities seem implacably opposed to building new houses

HOW KENYAN HISTORY IS BEING REWRITTEN • Inflated Mau Mau death figures based on incorrect statistical projections have now become accepted as “fact”, says David Elstein

EVERYDAY LIES WITH THEODORE DALRYMPLE

SWEDEN’S FAILED LIBERAL PROJECT • Why does a country once regarded as a model of moderation and progressiveness now have the highest level of gun violence in Europe and more than 100 bombings a year?

The “baddies” don’t know they are • A process of dehumanisation enables the savagery unleashed during the October 7 pogrom

THE THREE MUSKETEERS OF THE FRENCH RIGHT • A new generation of radicals in France see their political mission as nothing less than saving European civilisation but will they ever be able to work together in an alliance?

Threesomes, skin flicks and France’s philosopher king • Laurent Lemasson reflects on the jarring disconnect between Michel Houellebecq’s critiques of sexual liberation and his dissolute lifestyle

The Committee of The Edwin Savage Society • Scholarly flame-keepers

Burning effigies for the Man • Esmé Partridge says the 1973 film The Wicker Man is an ironic masterpiece that exposes the paradox at the heart of modern paganism

The humanity of Horace • The wisdom of someone who has lived a little is at the heart of the verse of the ancient poet who was adopted as the mascot of the Enlightenment

Back to boom and bust • The Bank of England’s latest blunder will lead the country into a damaging recession

THE MINDLESS DEFACING OF A NATIONAL TREASURE • Once lauded as one of the most charming historic cities in England, Cambridge is being ruined by architectural monstrosities and ill-thought-out traffic schemes

HOW DOES ANYTHING EVER GET BUILT? • We have a housing shortage but builders have to meet ever proliferating regulations while single-issue pressure groups effectively have a veto on any new construction

Save Gaza with a Queer intifada

STUDIO • The Crystal Palace Subway

Adam Dant on …

Restless zeal of the insomniac emperor

Chapter and verse on the unknowable Bard

Spilling the beans on the great spymasters

Life versus learning: a battle of the titans

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A magnificent update — for good and ill

Military history is set to repeat itself

Time to ask “But what about the children?”

A masquerade of Rawlsian liberalism

The Plot thins

One of these books is worth...