A plan to save our towns
Time for a renaissance in our devastated urban landscape
Latin love, Hispanic hate
Spain and Argentina’s complex relationship is being strained by the World Cup
Cosmonaut thriller is absolutely stellar
Strong characters drive Star City forward in an increasingly paranoid hothouse of fear, betrayal and adultery
The glories of front gardens
People who pave over gardens have hearts of stone
The problem with permanent secretaries
The role offers too much power with too little accountability
Country house colonisation
An attempt to achieve historical accountability ends up being an exercise in historical obscurantism
Nigel Farage is not establishment
Power in the UK is not determined by your schooling or your bank account
A triumphant return
Jesus Christ Superstar, the London Palladium
Shabir Ahmed is a symptom
Deporting the grooming gang leader, while just, will not solve our problems
The case against recognising Somaliland
The Somaliland lobby is being dangerously naive about the realities of the region
The end of Peel’s police?
She invokes a vanished age of policing, but Shabana Mahmood’s reforms point towards a more continental model of policing
Love on manoeuvres
La fille du régiment, Covent Garden
Hang up on Britain’s blight boxes
Outdated regulations are keeping thousands of redundant phone boxes on Britain’s streets
The man who defied the ministry
Tom Rolt, whose rescue of the Talyllyn Railway provided a model of how we can stand up to the homogenistion of our culture
Killing with kindness
The MoD’s drive for a net zero military is an ideological folly that risks national security
Bring back literary vendettas
Grub Street thrived when
there was an “establishment”,
movements and feuds
Sex, success and failure
Sarah Ditum talks with songwriter Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy
A police school for scandal
Is it any wonder there’s a two-tier policing controversy when officer training is focused on political correctness?
David Lean
The cinematic genius admired by today’s directors
We can Handel more
Handel: Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline &c. (Prospero)
Why did India ban this film?
“Satluj” is an important film and its suppression is unjust
Cringing at the cliffedge
How British satire, and British politics, became painfully unfunny
Why ministers fail
Even the more effective politicians do not have time to achieve anything
The intractable problems pulling modern Britain apart
When does upholding free speech become an act of self-sabotage?
Tinker Bell, Puck, Dobby & Co.
An account of everything even the most dedicated fairy-follower could want to discover
Romance rethink
An optimistic rejoinder to common dating advice
Patchett is as good as she needs to be
Whistler by Ann Patchett; The Smiths: A Novella by Michael
Bracewell; Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai
Spielberg’s ho-hum space chase
Those describing it as a masterpiece cannot have seen Saving Private Ryan or Schindler’s List
When art took on fascism (and lost)
Abstract activist concerns have overshadowed aesthetic production
Not mad for it
I Puritani, Royal Opera, Covent Garden
Sweeter the second time around
There’s a real weight to some lyrics once you’re nearer the end than the beginning
Shooting the breeze
Patrick Galbraith welcomes an ambitious new shoot tenant
Lebanon’s finest
Henry Jeffreys savours some reds and whites from the Bekaa valley
Tame Impala fails to impress
unconquered by a
taste of Crusader food
The summer chill
Cool soups for hot days