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.

IN DEFENCE OF EXCELLENCE

The Critic

SUPER SPRING SALE!

The men making the news

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

The road to two-tier justice • The furore about sentencing reforms agreeed by all parties erodes public trust in the law

Woman About Town

PESTON’S INBOX

Who wants to live forever? • The culture of corporate immortality will be hard to shake but we need to try

Don’t blame Islam for grooming gangs • The tight-knit clan structure of many in the Pakistani diaspora in Britain, not their religion, lies at the root of the depraved crimes of sexual abuse that have shocked the nation

Homosexuality is transphobic

The man who poisons the well • The idea that Reform’s election result in 2024 was due to the genius of Nigel Farage is absurd

MUSICAL MORPHINE TO LULL YOU TO SLEEP • Radio 3 provided me, and millions like me, with an education in the transcendent beauty of classical music. So why has it become …

WHY UNIVERSITIES MUST FACE THE MUSIC

IT’S TIME TO BRING BACK THE SONG-AND-DANCE MEN • An entire, brilliant chapter of English eighteenth-century music has been unjustly consigned to oblivion by the long shadow of Handel

STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS • Half a century after his split with Art Garfunkel, 83-year-old Paul Simon remains a sublime singer-songwriter

NO PLACE LIKE HOME • Getting on the property ladder is a distant dream for young Londoners. For them, finding somewhere to live entails an endless stream of fruitless viewings and, for the lucky ones, ruinous rents

WHAT REALLY MAKES US BRITISH? • Sam Bidwell doubts whether the loss of cricket, warm beer, fish and chips or parliamentary democracy would mean a loss of our national identity, and asks …

Dying to save the NHS • Assisted dying presents a new threat to the fairness and legitimacy of the welfare state

Too much of a good thing?

Seriously funny • John Self on the novelist David Lodge, whose finest work appealed to fans of lowbrow farce as much as to readers of highbrow literary fiction

Do countries have ethics? • A state which has squandered its moral legitimacy may be storing up trouble for itself

Clusters’ last stand • Labour threatens the co-ops that make farms profitable for farmers and good for the environment, argues Richard Negus

EVERYDAY LIES WITH THEODORE DALRYMPLE

AMERICA’S GREAT FOUNDATION MYTHS • Two hundred and fifty years since the first shots were fired, the War of Independence still colours the United States’s view of itself

Abigail Lamb Festival Fodder

Hypocrisy: the crack beneath Ireland’s craic • “Neutral” Dublin lectures the world about human rights while relying on NATO for security and stifling dissent

Drawing Britain’s new frontier • AI-generated impressions of new developments can never match the detail of hand-drawn masterplans

Adam Dant on …

STUDIO • George Ciancimino

Zola: a writer unsure who he wanted to be

Courtly love

Michelangelo and all that

Man or superman?

Young Winston: seizing the day

Free thinking

Professor knows best

A college call to arms

The art of brotherly rivalry

Losing our religion?

Talk is deep

Booker candidates… and also-rans

Who are the household names? • In a fragmented book-world culture, it is difficult to identify the up-and-coming...