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
Britain needs an actual leader of the opposition
Rishi Sunak is doing nothing to hold Keir Starmer to account
The war on women’s spaces
Roxanne Tickle’s legal triumph is nothing to giggle at
Money troubles
At stake is the fate of the most-watched football league in the world
The warp and weft of women’s history
This synthesising project downplays the variety of experience amongst ancient women
The UK’s war on free speech
Street violence is being met with restrictions on online speech by a Labour government desperate to clamp down on opinion
Murders for August
From killers down under to death across the pond
Gambling with the numbers
A new survey of problem gamblers has serious problems of its own
Illicit fun
Jonathan Leibowitz: Eastern Reflections (Delphian)
An optimistic history of women’s rights
Sexed: A History of British Feminism. Susanna Rustin
Graham Topman: festival organiser
Roll up, roll up, it’s time for another festival of arts, ideas and Graham (mostly Graham)
Ethnic identity is fine, as long as you’re not English
In the corridors of power, every ethnic grievance is welcome — except for the concerns of the English
