Soft power superpower?
It’s easy to mock, but British influence is real — and a potent tool for good
Every story tells a picture
Convenient clichés make for poor foreign policy
And never the twain shall meet?
A lineup of new books tackle the thorny China problem
Murders for July
The good, the beautiful and the grotesque
Fifty shades of muck
The lost art of governing your tongue
Lifeless life of a Technicolor titan
Ronan McGreevy plumbs new depths with his pitiful accounting of a great man’s death
Whitehall’s whispering mandarin
A tribute to Sir Roy Stone, whose secretive role at the heart of Westminster made government possible
The Critic Books Podcast: Portable Magic
Lucasta Miller discusses Emma Smith’s new book
The food bank of Threadneedle Street
Andrew Bailey and the art of apocalypse banking
The flawed science of trans inclusion in women’s sport
Advocates are embracing unreliable studies to justify unfair competition
There’s more to 1922 than just Woolf, Joyce, and Eliot
We should pay attention to Katherine Mansfield and Elizabeth von Arnim
Studio: Victorian architecture in Ulster
The undiscovered 19th century wonders of Northern Ireland
In an end, a beginning
The Queen’s absence serves as a reminder of the enduring importance of the monarchy