The unromantic truth about tortured poets
Taylor Swift is idealising the grim realities of the lives of poets
Katharine Birbalsingh is wrong about religion in schools
Education should prepare us for the good life, not just good grades
How to lose an empire
The rise and fall of the Sassoon family, whose yearning for social acceptance brought titles at the cost of success
Chasing votes on foreign soil
Viktor Orbán has created a pipeline of support for his Fidesz political project by granting full citizenship to thousands of ethnic Hungarians in Romania
Shrimp for breakfast in Sapporo
A culinary adventure with Japan’s finest seafood
Have the police criminalised being “openly Jewish”?
It is unacceptable for the police to blame the victims of potential bigotry
A wilting wallflower
A once ambitious civic project has devolved into the chaos that is London Wall West
A Labour of unrequited love
It will take more than vague apologetic gestures to redeem the Labour Party
How NatCon was saved
An attempted cancellation flopped in Brussels — but the bad taste remains
Has Israel walked into a forever war?
A brutal conflict seems unlikely to be winnable any time soon
Drying up
How canals retreated into quiet obscurity
It’s the only one for me, nicotine
Once again, public health fanaticism is being prioritised over simple pleasures
Seeing through Judith Butler
Very little substance lurks within the obscure prose
Let there be love
Filmmakers have fallen out of love with romantic movies, but it’s time to bring back passion to the picture house
Keystones of Britain’s history
Far too many young people are woefully ignorant of the splendour and meaning of our rich ecclesiastical architecture
Putting a gloss on big ideas
On the outsize influence of small magazines
W.S. Gilbert
A wildly funny and slyly subversive comic genius who deftly skewered the mores of Victorian England
And the band played on
Cash crisis in the arts — what’s new?
The true lie of the land
Landowners are reviled as enemies of the environment by the Jacobins of the green movement but these Poundland Robespierres are simply blinded by prejudice
Shock of the new
There is a difference between innovation and a gimmick
Why the goal glut?
Football — never boring, even when Italy is defending a 1–0 lead — has only grown more exciting
A decade of economic disaster
Only one verdict is possible: Conservative rule has been a comprehensive failure
Mirabel Chevenix
Grande dame
Scratches in the stonework of history
A new history of graffiti and rebellion is less light and bawdy than one may have expected
Staying in place
How history and heritage enrich our surroundings
Murders for April
April is the cruellest month, breeding detective fiction out of the dry land
Very public introspection
The content of “misery lit” is disturbing, but what purpose does it serve?
Off with the fairies
Unsurprisingly, the most brilliant of all English music-theatre pieces are mostly overlooked
Poor old Carmen
This update of a classic from the Royal Opera House is a reminder of why messing with great pieces is so risky
The untalented Mx. Ripley
In a story of a fiendishly successful performance, Eliot Sumner proved an extremely unconvincing man
Too much disinformation
Mariana Spring is back, with another series to set the songbirds a-twitter
Out with the old and in with the new
People are asking why the classic art market has declined — and will it recover?
Good for the sole
April calls for a recipe that combines the incoming and departing treats
Sloane danger
Obvious, expensive and tasteless, Azzurra’s food perfectly echoes Mr Angell’s ambience
A matter of National concern
This year’s race will come close to destroying its magic
