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.

A DISCORDANT SONG

The Critic

Therapy is making kids ill • What would really help children’s mental health is talk about resilience, strength and recovery

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

Plain English by committee • The effect of the Woolf reforms was to replace one set of legal jargon with another

Woman About Town

NOVA’S DIARY

Let the blood-letting begin • The Conservative Party must change radically if it is ever to gain power again

WHY THIS NEW BOOK WILL PASS UNNOTICED • Columnist Steve Sailer’s views on genetics and IQ have placed him beyond the pale for bien pensant reviewers

The true lie of the land • Landowners are reviled as enemies of the environment by the Jacobins of the green movement but these Poundland Robespierres are simply blinded by prejudice

Consider the way of the tiger • We should learn lessons from Japan as we start to face our own demographic crunch

THE LOVE THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME • Classical music was once part of our national life. Today it has been sidelined in schools, is disappearing from the airwaves and the press has drastically cut coverage. Why? Because it has been tarnished with the dread word “elitism”

SINGERS HAVE A VOICE, TOO • Study of the Western canon is often reduced to a politicised debate: power and patronage versus individual genius. The truth is far more complex

FINDING THE MIDDLE GROUND • Where do the acts too big for pubs but too small for arenas play?

GOD SAVE THE KINKS • How did four ornery lads rearing up from the post-war English underclass become national treasures?

EVERYDAY LIES

AND THE BAND PLAYED ON • Cash crisis in the arts — what’s new?

Mirabel Chevenix Grande dame

The Critic Profile W.S. Gilbert • A wildly funny and slyly subversive comic genius who deftly skewered the mores of Victorian England

The sacred and the profane • Allowing a “Rave in the Nave” in Canterbury Cathedral was a regrettable error of judgement

Putting a gloss on big ideas

It’s time to transition babies

KEYSTONES OF BRITAIN’S HISTORY • Far too many young people are woefully ignorant of the splendour and meaning of our rich ecclesiastical architecture — the buildings and religious artefacts which bring to life the story of our island nation

A decade of economic disaster • Only one verdict is possible: Conservative rule has been a comprehensive failure

Let there be love • Filmmakers have fallen out of love with romantic movies but it’s time to bring back passion to the picture house, says James Innes-Smith

CHASING VOTES ON FOREIGN SOIL • Viktor Orbán has created a pipeline of support for his Fidesz political project by granting full citizenship to thousands of ethnic Hungarians in Romania

How to lose an empire • Joseph Sassoon details the rise and fall of the Sassoon family, whose yearning for social acceptance brought titles and prestige at the cost of what made them so fabulously wealthy

Adam Dant on …

STUDIO • Bevis Marks Synagogue

A monumental work on British buildings

When classicists attack classics

Regency romance

Love in a remotely-controlled climate

He’s not the messiah, he’s a transwoman

Why Labour has the best history books

The fixtures that forged a nation

Weak, flawed, limited; an opportunity missed

A Freudian slip

A “lost” novel better left...