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.

DO THE RIGHT THING

No dog in the fight

The Critic

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Mutilation theology

Letters

Who to free — killers or rapists? • The police, the prisons and the courts are all dysfunctional, thanks to the Conservatives

Woman About Town

SUE GRAY’S INBOX

Is Scottish independence really dead? • Labour’s “more devolution” policy will only strengthen the cause in the long term

REVIVE THE ROOTS • To save the Conservative Party, its chairman must return powers to the local associations rather than retain the top-down direction from the leader’s office

SAY IT AIN’T SO, JOE • A victory for Trump spells death for democracy? How democratic is a shadowy cabal conspiring to hide the fact that Biden is too frail to govern?

A real education • We need a revolution in the way we teach, the curriculum, the provision of extracurricular activities and in the funding of schools if we are to provide pupils with..

DEI is just good manners, really • Stripped of all its jargon, "allyship" is nothing more than old-fashioned gallantry

State of the arts coverage

Is cricket growing up and leaving home?

Turning shares into swords • The Church doesn’t invest in defence companies but it prays you continue to do so

THE GOOSE AND THE GOLDEN EGG • The City of London Corporation arguably survives for one reason only: money

Cecilia Featherstonehaugh • Posh publisher

Playing the long game • Rishi Sunak misjudged the electorate by prioritising tax cuts over the country’s future

Evelyn Waugh at war • Max Bayliss pays tribute to Evelyn Waugh, whose themes of self-sacrifice, tradition and service seem to have been cast aside by today’s society

Rejoice, the war is over!

CLAUDIA-SAVAGE GORE: THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

The cinematic future is bright • Cinema audiences are dwindling and “The End” is in sight for communal film-watching, right? Wrong. The future for picture houses is looking much more bright, argues Robert Hutton

THE MELTING POT THAT BOILED OVER • Iason Athanasiadis takes the temperature in Beirut, once a playground for the rich and famous but now regionally disconnected and seemingly destined for decline

EVERYDAY LIES

WHY DO WE NEED A PRIVACY ELITE? • The watchdogs that should be keeping an eye on Google and Meta are in their thrall instead

The mean queens of the book world • A rare case of a “progressive” employee facing consequences for an online diatribe will not change a publishing industry in which political conformism is deeply embedded

Don’t shoot the piano man • How a silent film pianist was blacklisted from the BFI for supporting J.K. Rowling

Terence Rattigan • The subtly subversive chronicler of the melancholy undercurrents of Englishness still makes grown men cry

Adam Dant on …

STUDIO • The Worlds of Marco Polo: The Journey of a Thirteenth-Century Venetian Merchant, Palazzo Ducale, Venice

Rehabilitating an Edwardian genius

Snapshot of the PM who killed his party

From the monstrous to the grotesque

From austerity to the Swinging Sixties

The soaraway success of scoops and smut

The warp and weft of women’s history

Crossroads of history

Digging the Holy Land’s past

Wagner: the long and the short of it

How to take on the culture warriors

Pilot, playboy, player

Still-sparkling gems of an annus mirabilis

Let publishers publish • The...