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.

THE CRITIC SUMMER SALE • SUBSCRIBE TO THE CRITIC PRINT & DIGITAL EDITIONS AND GET A COMPLIMENTARY TOTE BAG

The failures of Boris

The Critic

Liverpool, lies and France’s shame • The Stade de France fiasco bodes ill for forthcoming international sports events

Miriam Elia on…

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

Independence: a two-way street • Both judges and politicians must respect long-standing constitutional conventions

Woman About Town • LISA HILTON AT THE VENICE BIENNALE

THE DIARY OF DILYN THE DOG

Sir Tony embraces the old • At Windsor, Blair was inducted into the real Britain, centred on the ancient institutions and traditions he had tried to replace

More town, less gown • SAM ASHWORTH-HAYES says the cult of mass university education saddles many students with unecessary debt, breeds dissatisfaction and does little to foster culture or enterprise

The Cosa Nostra in suits

EVERYDAY LIES WITH THEODORE DALRYMPLE

FRANCE’S UNSPOKEN, UNFINISHED CIVIL WAR • James Noyes says France’s cycle of social unrest and politically polarised elections has its roots in the Algerian conflict and the ensuing unresolved struggle for the soul of the nation

There is an alternative • The Church should invest in parishes and ministry if it wants to reach a new audience

ERROR OF JUDGMENT • How the Supreme Court got an issue of great constitutional importance so wrong

Bring back blasphemy laws • TITANIA McGRATH’S WOKE WORLD

Can feminists please drop the Handmaid habit? • Victoria Smith argues that feminists’ adoption of Margaret Atwood’s red cape serves only to obscure the complex real-life issues around women’s rights

Return of the 60s neurosis •  MICHAEL COLLINSsays Christopher Booker’s stinging takedown of the 1960s, The Neophiliacs, is even more relevant today

The wise gnomes of Zurich • Why is Switzerland’s rate of inflation so much lower than that of Britain and the USA?

STALIN’S LAST LAUGH • Robin Ashenden on the rehabilitation of Joseph Stalin, who has been recast in Russia not as a bloodsoaked tyrant, but as a strong, effective leader

The rise & fall of Sad White Men • Novels about middle class male malaise are now considered passé but they were once both groundbreaking and shocking

Amanda Scrimgeour Glamour hound • D.J. TAYLOR’S ARTY TYPES

Is classical colonial? • Naive and dogmatic proposals to “decolonise” Western classical music risk losing the richness of its history in a world dominated by the global pop industry

BLUEPRINT FOR A STARCHITECT • Brooklyn-born Robert A. M. Stern’s approach to designing buildings combines exuberance with historicism while eschewing monolithic modernism

Real social responsibility • Be wary of companies with public sector monkeys and a diversity officer on the board

Guardians of our culture • Conservative America still vibrantly upholds the cause of Western civilisation

Chaucer’s LONDON

STUDIO • Donatello at the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence

Manifesto for how we love now

An unfinished masterpiece

More than whippets and flat caps

Busting the myth of the Phantom Major

Birth of a four-decade nightmare

Frustrating life of a man of ideas

Rhyme of the times

A prayer for the Holocaust dead

Modern echoes of ancient history

A shapeless, moving, end in itself

Thinkers,...