July 2024

The Critic Magazine

The new magazine of ideas for open-minded readers

The Critic Magazine6 min read
Bloody Opposition
A DECADE INTO ITS RULE AND STILL fully protected by an invincible parliamentary majority and undented moral self-righteousness, what might the Labour government look and feel like? Let us imagine its tenor through those it might honour. Take the seni
The Critic Magazine1 min read
The Critic
Editor: Christopher Montgomery Deputy Editor: Graham Stewart Art Director: Martin Colyer Designers: David Rice and Sofia Azcona Production Editor: Nick Pryer Deputy Production Editor: Neil Armstrong Literary Editor: David Butterfield Executive
The Critic Magazine3 min read
Letters
In her devastating appraisal of transgender activists who seek to rewrite history and their role in promoting the falsehoods and harms identified in the Cass review (SORRY IS THE HARDEST WORD, JUNE), Helen Joyce rightly draws attention to Ruth Hunt.
The Critic Magazine3 min read
A Lawyer In Number 10
AS I WRITE THIS, SIR KEIR Starmer is on the cusp of becoming prime minister. The first lawyer of any note to be PM since H. H. Asquith KC more than a century ago, his views on legal and constitutional issues are naturally of some interest. This is no
The Critic Magazine2 min read
Nova’s Diary
“Have you seen my suit? The tight one. No, the really tight one.” Rishi is looking through his wardrobe. “Darling, half of my clothes seem to have disappeared.” “Oh yes,” says Akshata. “Well, I sent them off to the cleaners.” I don’t know why she’s s
The Critic Magazine4 min read
Woman About Town
“CRETE IS A CHIMERA, A MONSTER OF MYTH: a rhinoceros-headed salamander swimming resolutely towards the West, whilst the Peloponnese, like the hand of Adam in the centre of Michelangelo’s fresco, seems to tender its promontories regretfully towards th
The Critic Magazine8 min read
Hungary: Treading A Fine Line
‘‘WHEN I THINK OF UKRAINIANS, I think of them as the ones driving the tanks when the Soviets crushed the 1956 revolution,” was the first thing I remember a Hungarian host telling me when I was in Budapest to give a book talk — my new book is called T
The Critic Magazine6 min read
Keir: More Than Just A Lucky General
IT IS VERY IMPORTANT IN POLITICS, AS IN LIFE, not to get ahead of yourself. In the heady Glastonbury summer of 2017 Jeremy Corbyn was not, in fact, the prime minister. The fall of the Red Wall was not, in fact, the kind of permanent political realign
The Critic Magazine6 min read
Five Rules For Governing
To: Prime Minister From: John McTernan Date: 5 July 2024 Subject: Five rules for governing Congratulations! You made it. Glad you took my, “Five Rules for Ruling” (Critic, April 2020) to heart when you sorted out the Labour Party! Now you’re in No 10
The Critic Magazine5 min read
Where The Tories Must Go From Here
THERE IS NO TRADITION MORE STORIED — and more futile — than that of the post-election autopsy. With the dust settled, the ballots counted, and the bodies buried, defeated parties typically spend months engaged in a performative display of soul-search
The Critic Magazine4 min read
The Scarlet Letter
THE LIST OF 121 BOSSES who signed a letter backing Keir Starmer for prime minister conjures a peculiar vision of British business life. Among the signatories were Emma Woods, chair of Ancient+Brave, a “bovine collagen” business offering “wellness” an
The Critic Magazine7 min read
Why Levelling Up Failed
AS ANTONIO CONTE’S TENURE AS MANAGER OF TOTTENHAM Hotspur began to spiral in January 2023, the Italian made a striking observation on British football culture: In England, I think there is a bad habit that there is only the coach to speak. I have nev
The Critic Magazine6 min read
Whistler In Black And White
IN 1944, THE PAINTER REX WHISTLER WAS LEADING A tank crew through Normandy, when he was blown up by a mortar shell. The tank features in Viva Voce, a 22-minute artwork in Tate Britain, made by the black British artist Keith Piper as a critique of the
The Critic Magazine2 min read
Only Biden Can Save America
JOE BIDEN’S CRITICS HAVE NO MORAL COMPASS. They spread lies about him showering with his daughter and sexually assaulting former employees. Only a complete idiot could believe something so absurd. Unlike that dossier which proved that Donald Trump ha
The Critic Magazine2 min read
Everyday Lies With Theodore Dalrymple
After Donald Trump was found guilty on 34 charges, he said that he was “A VERY INNOCENT MAN”: not just innocent, mind you, but very innocent. Ordinary people who do not do what they are accused of having done, by contrast, are only innocent; Donald T
The Critic Magazine3 min read
A Misguided Election Briefing
YOU MAY HAVE MISSED this as the general election campaign veered between waves of tragedy and farce but the Church of England’s Diocese of Salisbury decided to issue a formal “briefing” on the issues of the election which, while being neither lachrym
The Critic Magazine5 min read
Why So Few Men Take Up The Pen
I’VE JUST FINISHED A VERY UNUSUAL BOOK: Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan. Its themes, characters and the author’s style of writing are all exceptionally good but that’s not why this book is unusual. It’s more because it’s a new and critically acclai
The Critic Magazine2 min read
Graham Topman Festival organiser
VISITORS TO THE SCRIVENS-BY-ON-the-Wold Festival of Literature and the Arts often stop to remark upon the picturesque figure who stands in the foyer of the church hall welcoming guests. Middle-aged to elderly, six feet three inches tall, occasionally
The Critic Magazine6 min read
We Must Blame The Parents
SHOULD PARENTS OF DELINQUENT CHILDREN be punished? This question keeps resurfacing in the French political debate. The French have long been overwhelmingly in favour of this idea. In response to this persistent social demand, which could therefore be
The Critic Magazine10 min read
We’ve All Been Letdown
THE GERMAN WORD FOR “DISAPPOINTMENT” IS ENTTÄUSCHUNG, WHICH STRICTLY TRANSLATES as “disillusionment”. It is the word chosen by Thomas Mann as the title of one of his earliest short stories: an encounter with a stranger in the Piazza San Marco. The na
The Critic Magazine4 min read
The Critic Profile
RINGO STARR’S GRINNING, head-shaking figure flailing away behind his Ludwig drum kit was as much a trademark of the early Fab Four as their collarless jackets and three-part harmonies. In interviews, his deadpan wit was the equal of John Lennon’s mor
The Critic Magazine10 min read
Europe Invaded
MATEUSZ SITEK, A POLISH SOLDIER ON DUTY AT THE frontier with Belarus, was an easy target. As he tried to close a hole in the border fence someone holding a makeshift weapon — a knife taped to a tree branch — rammed it through the gap straight into hi
The Critic Magazine6 min read
When Things Could Only Get Better
WHEN I HEARD RISHI SUNAK WAS ABOUT to call the election, I went online and saw the tragic spectacle unfold in real time. I watched as the heavens opened, and then struggled to hear the Prime Minister’s voice as Steve Bray’s loudspeaker started pumpin
The Critic Magazine4 min read
Bring Back Balanced Budgets
HAVE THE TORY POLITIcians in charge of our public finances since 2010 been financial magicians? As will soon be explained, in their years in office the state has borrowed more — relative to national output — than in any previous period of similar len
The Critic Magazine8 min read
Arts Practice Has Gained The Upper Hand Over Scholarship
STUDYING THE DEVELOPMENT OF LATE ELIZAbethan and early Jacobite theatre, the Commedia dell’arte, music-hall, pantomime, operetta or zarzuela for instance, one can draw upon scholarship in literature, music, theatre, history, sociology and more. But
The Critic Magazine1 min read
Adam Dant on …
IMAGE COURTESY OF ADAM DANT/TAG FINE ARTS LIMITED EDITIONS AVAILABLE WWW.TAGFINEARTS.COM■
The Critic Magazine4 min read
Studio
Walking south down Oxford’s Mansfield Road, it is hard not to be stopped in one’s tracks by the porter’s lodge of the Gradel Quadrangles, built for New College [1]. Opened only in April this year, and still awaiting their finishing touches, they are
The Critic Magazine5 min read
Of Mice And Men And Magdalen
THE LIFE OF A DEDICATED OXFORD don and literary figure is bound to contain few opportunities for drama, glamour, or adventure. “I enjoy monotony,” C.S. Lewis once admitted to a questioner, and that was surely a fortunate trait, given that he spent 30
The Critic Magazine6 min read
Being Economical With The Truth
THE STORY ARC OF THIS “SECRET history” is that the economist Friedrich Hayek invented an extreme form of capitalism known as neoliberalism in his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom which attracted some “fanatical disciples” who set up some think tanks whi
The Critic Magazine5 min read
Is Beer The Solution To All Of Life’s Problems?
HAVE YOU NOTICED THAT THINGS don’t really seem to work at the moment? Perhaps you have been to Accident and Emergency recently, or tried to catch a train, or are watching the general crisis engulfing British universities. There is lots of dysfunction
The Critic Magazine1 min read
Summer Sale 3 Issues For £3!
Take advantage of our Super Summer Sale, saving a huge 83%. For just £3 you will receive a 3-month subscription to The Critic (3 magazines delivered to your door). Already a subscriber? Then why not give a gift subscription to someone special! Subscr
The Critic Magazine3 min read
A Commanding Life
TIBERIUS WAS 55 YEARS OLD WHEN HE became the second Roman emperor. He ruled from AD 14 to 37, spending most of the second half of his reign on the island of Capri, where he never lost his grip on power despite being over 130 miles from Rome. Like mos
The Critic Magazine5 min read
An Optimistic History Of Women’s Rights
SUSANNA RUSTIN IS ONE OF THE SURPRISing survivors of the present trans culture war, having managed to remain a Guardian columnist despite her heretical view that sex is biological. When at that paper, Suzanne Moore found that when she wrote about “fe
The Critic Magazine5 min read
In The Beginning: Neither Fish Nor Fowl
I HAVE A CONFESSION TO MAKE: I DON’T GET Marilynne Robinson. She is not short of high profile fans, from historian Tom Holland and Oprah to Barack Obama. The words “greatest living American/Christian novelist” get thrown around a lot. I can certainly
The Critic Magazine5 min read
Confessions Of A Left-wing Pope
THE PATH TO BECOMING POPE IS A ROAD travelled by only a chosen few. A small group of 266 cardinals have been elected the spiritual leader of Roman Catholicism, whose devotees make up more than a sixth of the world’s population. While each man has wor
The Critic Magazine4 min read
The Blunders That Restored The Crown
AT THE RISK OF RUINING MY RELATIONship with The Critic, I quite like the Republic pressure group. These anti-monarchy campaigners are easy to mock, of course, and not merely because they typify the self-righteous soul of retirement liberalism. After
The Critic Magazine3 min read
The Savage Triumph
“SOLDIERS! THE YEAR 1944 WILL BE very difficult. It is our joint task to transcend the purely defensive in its course and deal the adversary such heavy blows that finally the hour will come in which Providence can grant the victory to that nation whi
The Critic Magazine3 min read
Killing With Kindness
THE PURPOSE OF HUGH WARWICK’S latest book is, he asserts, “to find the middle ground” in a debate over the efficacy and ethics of killing animals for conservation. Cull of the Wild succeeds, but only in part. While the discourse is well written, thou
The Critic Magazine5 min read
Weaponising Weasel Words
“THAT’S ONE OF THOSE IRREGULAR VERBS, isn’t it?” says Bernard Woolley, principal private secretary of the hapless Jim Hacker in the classic television show Yes, Prime Minister. “I give confidential security briefings. You leak. He has been charged un
The Critic Magazine6 min read
On The Cusk Of Austerity
RACHEL CUSK IS ONE OF THE MOST INteresting writers in Britain today, for both the content of her books and the path of her career. She started out as an extremely good practitioner of a well-established form: the comic novel of middle-class manners.
The Critic Magazine3 min read
Twilight Of The Gods
REVIEWING SALMAN Rushdie’s Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder in last month’s Literary Review, the Rev. Fergus Butler-Gallie struck what to most observers of the modern literary scene will seem a rather familiar note. The quality that disti
The Critic Magazine4 min read
£355 For Glasto But Opera’s Elitist?
ZIONISM IS RACISM. Men are rapists Opera is elitist. Set aside the first two fallacies for another day. The third has been latterly empowered, ending the careers of young artists and jeopardising the art form’s survival. Consider the prosecution case
The Critic Magazine4 min read
Gelding: The Pros
IT’S NOT OFTEN YOU HEAR OPERA being praised for its progressive zeal. Quite the opposite, in fact: and it’s the people who run it who seem most obsessed with its reactionary infamy — as though it were a drunken uncle at a wedding, liable to do someth
The Critic Magazine4 min read
Romeo Coates “Between You And Me …”
HATS OFF TO THE GUARDIANfor finally highlighting the plight of baby boomer stars still unfairly forced to earn a crust at this late stage of the game. Speaking as part of the acting vintage who enjoyed their greatest financial success between 30 and
The Critic Magazine4 min read
Thriller Vs Filler
WHEN THE SPOTIFY APP TOLD ME Billie Eilish’s new album had landed, the announcement was surprisingly dictatorial: “Stream hit me hard and soft front-to-back now.” It wasn’t just the imperative that took me aback. It was the insistence I listen to the
The Critic Magazine4 min read
A Neglected Radical
THE TWO MOST FAMOUS NAMES emanating from the French Caribbean during the years of the Revolution and Napoleonic wars were Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie (better known as the Empress Joséphine) and Toussaint Louverture, a former slave turned
The Critic Magazine4 min read
A rollicking, great Kiss Me Kate
BY THE TIME COLE PORTER STARTED his breakneck-speed Kiss Me Kate project in the sombre aftermath of the Second World War, his glory days of pre-war musical hits were fading. Even he sounded defensive about the project. Turning Shakespeare’s The Tamin
The Critic Magazine4 min read
Polls At The Pics
IT’S A TESTAMENT TO HOW WELL things are going in the current Conservative campaign that when I asked politically-minded friends what election films they could think of, the most popular reply was Brewster’s Millions. Who knows what will be happening
The Critic Magazine4 min read
Rebus At The School Of Hard Knox
TELEVISION DETECTIVES OFTEN seem familiar. They are usually male, divorced and drink too much. They miss their kids. Sometimes they are alcoholics, battling to not even take a whiff of the hard stuff. Their ex-wives are attractive — much more so than
The Critic Magazine3 min read
Heine: A Dreamer And A Romantic
● “me reading heine, you somewhere in China”, wrote Ira Gershwin, ever the wit, for his brother George. Even in those days the German writer was a taste acquired by few Anglophones. Now the man known to his family as Harry languishes in the kind of p
The Critic Magazine4 min read
The Exec On An Unfiltered Journey
Alright, suckers, I’ve had enough of journalism. There isn’t enough money in it for a hustler like me. I need to be stacking paper — and I mean banknotes rather than freelance submissions. Yes, I’m going to become a businessman. I’m going to become a
The Critic Magazine4 min read
In Praise Of Spanish Practices
MY COLUMNS ARE NORMALLY about architecture in England. But having recently been to a conference about architectural history in Santiago de Compostela, I want to reflect on the experience of visiting a city which is so remarkably well preserved as a h
The Critic Magazine4 min read
Confidently Cantonese
SPRING IS THE GAYEST SEASON for London restaurant openings. Arlington, July, The Cocochine, Lita, Oma — which to choose? Sometimes though, amidst the merry whirl of town life, it can be refreshing to dine in a restaurant that isn’t hustling for your
The Critic Magazine3 min read
My Magyar dish
VAINGLORY, NOT GLUTTONY, took me to Budapest. The government esteems the Magyar Külügyi Intézet, the Institute of International Affairs. So the invitation to give lectures and seminars made me hope I might do some good. The Institute was full of lear
The Critic Magazine4 min read
En Rama Drama
EVERY ENGLISHMAN HAS HIS second country - usually in southern Europe - where he dreams of escaping the misery and damp of Britain for la dolce vita or la belle vie. France and Italy tend to come out on top here, though Greece and Portugal are also po
The Critic Magazine3 min read
Seller Beware
“WE THOUGHT THE protest was an extremely dignified one. They could not have done it in a nicer way,” said Graham Llewellyn, deputy chairman of Sotheby’s and auctioneer at a silver sale in 1975 after a walk-out of silver dealers during an auction foll
The Critic Magazine3 min read
Heaven Scent
FOR MUCH OF THE LAST CENTURY, HARRODS HELD THE ROYAL Warrant, the positionnement haut de gamme on Brompton Road and the reputation for supplying anything its customers might crave. Not for nothing did its founder choose the motto Omnia Omnibus Ubique
The Critic Magazine3 min read
Itchen For Fishing
I DON’T CAST PARTICULARLY well but on my third attempt, the mayfly pattern dropped onto the water just upstream of the trout on the edge reeds. The fly came round right over the fish, then it drifted up towards the surface, knocked it with its nose,
The Critic Magazine3 min read
Racing’s Shame
I DON’T USUALLY TURN TO THE NEW YORKER FOR ITS TAKE ON racing. Even on US dirt tracks. And its new podcast series, The Runaway Princesses, isn’t really about racing. Except that it is. The New Yorker’s blurb describes the podcast as: “A story of why
The Critic Magazine3 min read
Seasonal Style
AGE. IT DOES THINGS TO YOU. One minute, one has no idea what “the season” is, reserving summer for sex and sleep. The next, one is hobbing one’s nob off with the rest of the ton at flower shows, picnics purporting to be country-house opera, and weddi
The Critic Magazine3 min read
Declining Nude
ANOTHER FAILURE. Basically I decided to go to this life drawing class in Highgate, in response to Will claiming loudly while out for dinner with various parents from Hector’s school that “Claudia has zero passion.” On our return home, not speaking, h
The Critic Magazine4 min read
The Space Man
LIKE THE TRIPPY BIT IN 2001: A Space Oddysey, EURO 2024 is full of stars: Jude Bellingham, Harry Kane, Kylian Mbappé, the ageing supernovas of Luka Modrić and Cristiano Ronaldo. In their considerable collective shadow, however, is a man who in his ow
The Critic Magazine4 min read
A Great Games
THE PARIS OLYMPICS OF 1924 HAD A number of innovations that survive today. There was the first use of the motto of citius, altius, fortius (swifter, higher, stronger), the first radio coverage and the first Olympic Village. The first Winter Games had
The Critic Magazine4 min read
Summer For Sale
LIKE MANY BRITISH DELUSIONS OF moral grandeur, CRICKET’s took hold in the Victorian era. Few sporting myths have been more endearing than the notion that the game depicted in Tom Brown’s Schooldays was created ex nihilo. In fact, as the author Derek

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