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.

FRENCH LESSONS

Making a difference

The Critic

Consent isn’t everything

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

Pronouncing the death penalty • Is it right for decisions of life and death to be made on such a low standard of proof?

Woman About Town

SUE GRAY’S INBOX

Countdown to an energy apocalypse • Andrew Orlowski envisages what will happen when the wind doesn’t blow

On the King’s Road to ruin • The decline of commerce on Chelsea’s celebrated street is a worrying sign for London

How H&W hit the iceberg • JONATHAN FORD on the opportunism and ineptitude that brought a once-proud industry to its knees

Making a mockery of Labour • Humorists are struggling to draw a bead on Sir Keir Starmer’s team of unknowns

Going, going, gone: the end of art critics • The critic has become the lackey of the art world. Their function is now simply to prop up the poorly articulated ideas of their peers

If Trump wins, it’s over

WHY THE FRENCH FAR RIGHT ARE A BUNCH OF LOSERS • The Rassemblement National might be the leading party in France but that does not mean it will ever be the governing party

Now’s your time, House of Lords • The upper house must prove its worth by opposing the shabby Chagos Islands deal

WAS HOUELLEBECQ RIGHT? • When a controversial novelist forecast the Islamicisation of France he was mocked by the intelligentsia, yet his prediction was far from fanciful

Bernard-Henri Lévy • The philosopher, war reporter and professional pessimist has long enjoyed celebrity status in France

Sebastian Milbank • Roger Scruton should not be idolised but rather viewed as a guide to rethinking an evolving conservatism, argues

The tax-and-spend timebomb • This one-term Labour government will bequeath a wretched economic mess

Light in the darkness • Christopher Montgomery and Graham Stewart speak to Nigel Biggar about his career and Oxford’s Pharos Foundation

Why was I the only reporter? • At the sentencing of a gang of Rotherham serial rapists and sex abusers …

NO, CHURCHILL WASN’T THE BAD GUY • David Coates on the debate over Britain’s wartime leader, reignited by an ignorant revisionist account of the origins of the Second World War

Dissolve the hotbeds of wokery • William Atkinson calls for failing universities to go the way of Britain’s monasteries under Henry VIII

EVERYDAY LIES WITH THEODORE DALRYMPLE

Don’t bite the hand that feeds the birds • A deeply flawed doomsday message on Britain’s biodiversity status endangers the successful state-funded schemes that help nature fight back

Izzy Hardcastle Book-world ornament

Adam Dant on …

STUDIO • The Lost Gardens of London exhibition at the Garden Museum in Lambeth, London

Boris: the PM who could do no wrong

Bursting the myth of the “people’s war”

A passionate battler for buildings

The monumental cradles of democracy

Life amid the ruins

Vorsprung durch Technik R.I.P.

Sometimes it’s best to shoot the messenger

The restless life of a very bourgois rebel

The big picture

An actor’s story is a late career marvel

Chill message of Booker shortlist • The contempt of publishers for middle-class life and values is diminishing the novel

Romeo Coates

Passing the baton to the offspring

Booze or muse?

One of the greats

Art of...