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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Elizabeth the Good

The Critic

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

Miriam Elia on…

I reserve the right to upset you • Only idiots think we should succumb to the special pleading of intolerant majorities

Woman About Town

THE DIARY OF DILYN THE DOG

A modern way of mourning

REMEMBRANCE OF A FORGOTTEN NATION • Paul Lay discovered people from all walks of life queuing to pay their respects to Elizabeth II. En route to Westminster Hall, he found reminders of our country’s shared past, and of those who are overlooked by the modern state

THE GRAND OLD MAN AND THE INGÉNUE QUEEN • Andrew Roberts on the touching mutual devotion between the great wartime leader and our greatest modern monarch

REBUILDING A MONARCHY AND A NATION • John Ritzema considers whether the decline of the Austo-Hungarian Empire after the long reign of Emperor Franz Joseph has lessons for the future of the United Kingdom following Queen Elizabeth II’s seven decades on the throne

Indyref2: yes or no? • The Supreme Court must rule on Nicola Sturgeon’s bid for a second referendum

The three circles of hell • JAMES KIRKUP says today’s glossy big-city party conferences are even more nightmarish than the traditional grim trips to run-down seaside resorts

Labour: a new hope? • Tom Hamilton says Sir Keir Starmer’s low-key approach may yet pay dividends. He has cleaned up his party and faces a tired government — but he must now seize his opportunity

Beware of the Boris haters • Many of Boris Johnson’s most fervent detractors are drawn from the “Restablishment”, an elite who despise him for his stance on Europe and seek to frustrate the rolling back of the state

Making the moral case for war • Ukrainians face slaughter and subjugation. Church leaders must back them unequivocally

Turn to page two for kink and sex toys • Schools are using teaching material provided by opaque consultancies pushing fringe views on sex and race

Down with the cis-axial patriarchy

THE CURIOUS CULT OF THE FRIEND OF FASCISM • Anthony Daniels says Ayn Rand’s vile philosophy was one of the crudest ever to be taken seriously, but attracts the devotion of fundamentalists for whom she could do no wrong

Populists: doing us all a favour

CLOTHES MAKETH NOT AN IRON LADY • Patrick Porter says Liz Truss’s naive doctrine of “geo-liberalism” will not survive contact with the frictions and compromises of a messy, complex world

Mugged by a mudcaked spud • Farmers’ markets are a rip-off aimed at food snobs and posturing fools with more money than sense

EVERYDAY LIES WITH THEODORE DALRYMPLE

An overdone “emergency” • The effects of soaring gas prices on inflation are likely to be transitory

Biting the hand that feeds them • LOLA SALEM says so-called “radical” performance art is little more than a publicly-funded alliance between the art establishment and faux-rebellious poseurs

Philip Larkin: the man who was always right • Alexander Larman says the great man’s peerless poetry is not the “soppy stuff ” of cheap romanticism, but a harsh, unsparing — and often beautiful — look at the world

Barry Frencham

Adam Dant on …

STUDIO • The Magnificent Seven: Victorian Graveyards in London

A fresh take on difficult women

The upside of the bubonic...