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.

SELLING THE JEWELS

The Critic

Hard lessons in life • The spread of victimhood culture has helped popularise novel gender identities and sexual orientations by allowing people to claim to be oppressed without suffering any hardship

Letters

Posthumous courting • Sometimes love can conquer even the unimpassioned proceedings of the law courts

Woman About Town

DILYN’S DIARY (AGAIN)

The Tories’ phony peace • The real battle of ideas will begin when the party’s time in office reaches the end of the road

Poppy Coburn analyses the worrying activities of the Radical chic charities

The haves and the have-yachts • How can we ensure our beleaguered CEOs receive the rewards they richly deserve?

A CLASSIC CASE OF MISSING THE POINT • Anonymous says a campaign to “decolonise” the University of London’s Classics curriculum risks the future of the subject itself

Speaking English is colonial terrorism

WHY MODERNISTS CAN BE MONARCHISTS • There’s an assumption that atonalists must be anarchists, radical composers must be out to smash the system, maverick maestros must hold “progressive” left-wing beliefs … but it simply is not so

BETJEMAN’S FAB FREAK-OUT • Robert Thicknesse recalls a thrilling “collab” between the then Poet Laureate and a group of avant garde performance artists

THE QUIETEST GUEST OF ALL • Mahan Esfahani says the clavichord makes up for its lack of grandeur with extraordinary expressiveness

WORDS & MUSIC • John Self enjoys the bookish thrill of recognising the literary references of the pop artists he loves

Jayne Payne Counter-cultural survivor

CANADA’S GRAVE ERRORS • Why does a country once regarded as a model of moderation and sanity now view itself as a seething den of blood-soaked bigotry and white supremacy?

DON’T MAKE IRAN THE NEW UKRAINE • Matthew Petti warns that American hawks are pushing for war with Tehran

EVERYDAY LIES WITH THEODORE DALRYMPLE

THE POOR RELATION OF THE ART WORLD • All over Europe traditional figurative art, particularly from the nineteenth century, is being shunted to the corners of museums — and eventually removed from view.

Treasure-houses of the nation • Britain needs to decide on the future of our great churches — and what we want them to be

Keeping it in the family • Johnny Leavesley says family businesses often run into problems when it’s time to hand over the baton to a new generation

A levelling-down agenda • Kittie Helmick says efforts to boost the number of minority students at her U.S. high school have served neither the students nor academic standards

The ghosts of Norwich • JAMES NOYES laments the callous destruction of the ancient city of his youth in the name of efficiency, modernity and a failed utopian vision of “the Good Life”

Don’t chuck money at foreigners • It is wrong to hand public money to overseas firms to expand their UK operations

The conversion of Paul • Daniel Johnson recalls the political journey of his father Paul Johnson, who renounced his socialist ideals to become a standard-bearer of the Right

Adam Dant on …

STUDIO • 900 years of St Bartholomew’s Hospital

Lifting the mask of a mercurial master

Forgettable history of forgotten music

England’s polymath of the piano

In search of social justice for women

A love letter to hard-won wisdom

In the court of the Mughal emperor

When nationalism was woke

Pyramids for piggies and Gothic...