Wagner: the long and short of it
Creativity consists in destruction, in turning the composer inside-out, in making fun of him.
Brahms: sublime genius on a major scale
Forget the sneering of Benjamin Britten, for whom Brahms’s music was “ugly and foul”, the German composer and pianist was a virtuoso talent whose best works burn with volcanic passion and seriousness of purpose
The sound of love
Robert Schumann expresses the intense passion and despair of true love better than any other composer
Disability is not an identity
Long before trans rights lobby, disability activists were denying biological reality
Anti-Christian persecution is an international problem
Britain should use its diplomatic influence to help
Autumn Reeves
It was a grim budget — but was it a necessary one?
The 300 Years’ War
How conflict over land ownership shaped conflict over Ireland
Donald Trump and the age of sovereign internationalism
We are entering a new age of great power competition
No, Churchill wasn’t the bad guy
The debate over Britain’s wartime leader has been reignited by an ignorant revisionist account
Could there be a Reform revolution?
Reform’s Welsh Conference brimmed with optimism — but can that be translated into success?
Keir’s woetanical garden
Labour still don’t understand the scale of the reforms that are needed
When America ignored a slaughter
Whatever America’s flaws, its absence from the global stage leaves a space quickly filled by far more malevolent actors
The perversity of the Oasis reunion
The cultural optimism of the nineties has been lost
Vorsprung durch Technik R.I.P.
The vaunted German model really is kaput — bust
