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.

WRONG PEOPLE, WRONG POLICY

The Critic

The BBC’s dangerous lies

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

Rough justice • The criminal appeals system is in a mess. But mooted reforms would lead to more appeals — and cost more money

Woman About Town • LISA HILTON

PESTON’S INBOX

Island of strangers? • Jonathan Clark links the decline of popular aphorisms to a disappearing shared moral code

HOW CAN WE MAKE US ALL BRITISH? • The strong social norms of Britain’s working class helped generations of immigrants integrate. But today’s fractured society makes that far harder, with worrying implications for the future

Time to chuck out the lawyers • Anonymous says the immigration system is broken beyond repair, thanks to activist barristers and a hopeless Home Office

THE INTELLECTUAL WHO LOVED A DRAMA • Michael Bentley recalls Maurice Cowling, the Conservative commentator and historian whose books on a variety of topics influenced thought on the right of the party

Go back to the future • D.H. ROBINSON Millennial “progressive” politics have failed. They have worsened our country and undermined democracy itself

Time to cancel cash? • The abolition of physical currency is not a panacea but might help deter tax dodgers

Innocent until proven guilty? • Helen Joyce recounts the Kafkaesque story of how she was secretly logged on police records as a criminal

EVERYDAY LIES WITH THEODORE DALRYMPLE

THE CASE FOR REALISM • Human nature means there is no escaping the shadow of war. We should be pessimistic about the possibility of change

Is the Cambridge VC worth it?

Prospect in middle age • David Goodhart: It was 30 years ago today (give or take) that Prospect began to play. How does Britain’s political magazine scene look decades later and what is Prospect’s place in it?

Crumbs from the table • The new Archbishop of Canterbury must let go — and trust clergy to do what’s best

With friends like these … • Alexandra Wilson charts opera’s wild vicissitudes of fortune under both Labour and the Conservatives

Barry Huggins Working-class hero

Designs for life • Barendina Smedley says there is still much to admire, four decades on, in the timeless good taste displayed in the bestselling book The Englishman’s Room

Tom Stoppard • The quintessential intellectual playwright whose erudition convinces theatregoers they are far cleverer and better-read than they actually are

Left-wing violence is a myth

ACCOST IN TRANSLATION • Each new rendering in English of a classic written in another language must make the case for its superiority to previous versions. Cue barbs and accusations

WHO WILL STAND UP FOR “THE WEST”? • Daniel Johnson worries that an illiberal America and a war-torn, world-weary Europe are failing to champion our Western civilisational values of liberty, democracy and the rule of law

Adam Dant on …

STUDIO • Two views of the same country

A fascinating record of a vanished world

Bobo, Boofy and all

Inside story of how Brexit got done

Eurocentric view of an American giant

Vive la difference

The dirty secret of the Muslim world

A man of Rome, out of Africa

To have, to hold — and to create

Life in the press gang

England’s glory

Small lives and violent deaths

Nicola’s novel? Just say no • There are far worse celebrity...