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 3 ISSUES FOR JUST £3

Set the music free

The Critic

Save this Severn heaven • A property developer has an idyllic and precious plotland development in his sights

Miriam Elia on…

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

I spy a new clampdown • Will new laws to combat foreign espionage inhibit public interest journalism?

Woman About Town

THE DIARY OF DILYN THE DOG

Boris will be Boris… again

WHY ARE WE SUPPORTING UKRAINE? • A CAUTIONARY NOTE ABOUT VICARIOUS WAR

How do we deal with war crime? • The horrors of Bucha have reminded us that humans are capable of evil on a huge scale

Rod Dreher comes home

ZERO SENSE: WHY NUCLEAR ABOLITION SHOULD FAIL • The harsh reality is that the nuclear revolution is irreversible and makes major wars significantly less likely, says Patrick Porter

EVERYDAY LIES WITH THEODORE DALRYMPLE

Bad news brings Rishi good luck • Soaring inflation means the Chancellor can avoid an unpopular tax hike

Whitehall’s whispering mandarin • MARK D’ARCY pays tribute to Sir Roy Stone, whose secretive role at the heart of Westminster made government possible

The birds and the beef • Far from being an ecological enemy, cattle-grazing encourages biodiversity and helps in the battle to save some of our most endangered species

Don’t trust the myths of biology

BRING ON THE BIG BEASTS • Music needs strident champions who can stand up for truth and excellence against the pious, box-ticking diversity fanatics

DOING THE STRAND • Michael Henderson recalls the glorious heyday of Roxy Music, when just to be a fan of a band that sounded like no other was like being in an exclusive club

BEFORE AND AFTER GOULD • Mahan Esfahani says Bach’s Goldberg Variations have a life far beyond their modern association with Glenn Gould

THE SOUND OF LOVE • Jonathan Gaisman says that Robert Schumann expresses the intense passion and despair of true love better than any other composer

MUSICAL SCORES • Stephen Pollard says that while football can be balletic, great passages of play are often accompanied in his mind by fragments of Bach or Mozart

Professor Barry Mole Scholarly Obsessive

The false euphoria of dysphoria • Pink News presents breast removal as “pure trans joy” in a new video

Doubling down on a fraud • Recalling the murky role played by civil rights leaders including Rev Al Sharpton in a notorious faked aduction

THE MORAL BLINDNESS OF PUTIN’S GENERALS • Daniel Johnson says Russia’s murderous tactics to “de-Nazify” Ukraine have made its military leaders doppelgangers of the senior officers who executed Hitler’s evil plans

An unlikely man of the people • Michael Collins says Kenneth Clark has been unfairly accused of elitism. He wanted to democratise the glories of Western art and make it available to all

Adam Dant on …

STUDIO • Victorian Architecture in Ulster

Amis at 100: a master satirist without honour

A square prehistory of popularmusic

Rich history of the revolutionary poor

Love letter to the printed word

New stories from a very old city

Going to the ends of the earth

Heroism and high strategy

Unholy politics and a Christian exodus

New entrants in the rediscovery business

Time for us all to grow up • Why is the modern British novel so terribly earnest and irrepressibly...