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.

SERIOUS CHOICES

The Critic

Gender gymnastics

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

The myth of Winston’s legacy • The European Court of Human Rights was never a Conservative project

Woman About Town

NOVA’S DIARY

Miriam Elia on…

HAVE WE LOST OUR MINDS? • Simon Heffer says our shallow and insincere public discourse pales by comparison to the bitter, but profound, politics of the Edwardian era

Mystic woo as management tool • Why your “breathwork” is now just as important as your bottom line

THE KEYBOARD SECRET ARMY • At the heart of the Government and media’s reponse to the pandemic was a confused, paranoid and often farcical war against “disinformation”. The truth, however, was in short supply.

Freddie Simmons • Serial Autobiographer

The balloon goes up • MARK ALMOND asks whether history can teach us anything about Chinese ambition, growing Sino-American tension and what might happen when…

REALITY CHECK: RUSSIA COULD WIN • The West insists Ukraine will expel the invaders, but as the military momentum increasingly shifts in Russia’s favour, we need to understand exactly what we want out of this war before thousands more die.

Follow the ball • The commercialisation of football offers a model for post-industrial success

Who watches the Wikipedia editors? • The curious case of a carefully-tended article about a controversial academic raises questions about the objectivity of the world’s most popular encyclopedia

Double rapists can be ladies, too

It’s only human nature • It’s naïve to think life is all about laughing and loving, while ignoring our wider flaws

Surrogacy and the rise of the female patriarch • Most modern feminists blithely ignore the exploitation of less-privileged women as "wombs for hire" for the rich and powerful

EVERYDAY LIES WITH THEODORE DALRYMPLE

The roots of school rage • Many of the most trenchant opponents of grammar schools enjoyed the benefits of a private education

Enough to drive you insane • The driving test logjam is a depressing symptom of national dysfunction

A gift to pimps and traffickers • A bill to legalise prostitution in South Africa is being promoted as a boon for women’s rights. It will instead lead to an explosion in the sex trade and more sexual violence

Rainer Zitelmann • Rainer Zitelmann is that rare thing, an unabashed champion of capitalism, says Daniel Johnson

CAN THE BBC BE SAVED FROM ITSELF? • Robin Aitken says the Corporation remains mired in liberal groupthink that undermines its duty to provide impartial news coverage

An off-kilter visionary • ALEXANDER LARMAN says cult novelist Henry Green, who was once widely lauded as the finest writer of his generation, should be rescued from undeserved obscurity

Land of ghosts and legends • Isaac Sligh goes in search of Crusaders in chainmail and a city of the dead in the Caucasus Mountains

Adam Dant on…

STUDIO • Normandy’s English Connection

Dark obsessions of the Demon Dog • Dan Jones is an historian, novelist, TV presenter and journalist

The British empire, for good and ill

Rich portrait of our island nation

A window into the medieval mind

How to avoid the Third World War

Rebadging the past as feel-good therapy

The man who tamed the Russian bear

England’s fair and pleasant land

Pains and pleasures of...