Archives
The Critic Books Podcast: Bacon in Moscow
What was it like to take Francis Bacon to the USSR?
Can Channel 4 shake-up Super League?
The relationship between rugby league and television has never been easy. Now it’s Channel 4s turn to shake things up
Star stuck
Should we still care about Michelin stars?
Imperial misdemeanours
Getting at the truth about T H Huxley
Smoking hot beefcake
Lisa Hilton enjoys a surpisingly good dinner while ogling the snowboard instructors in Andorra
The mask of authority
All of us need to answer hard questions about the decisions we made during the pandemic
Slaves to bad history
The battle for academic rigour at the home of the Scottish Enlightenment
I shall not cease from re-education
A lesson in compassion, intelligence and humility
Belfast boy
Christopher Silvester reviews two semi-autobiographical movies: Oscar-contender Belfast and arthouse The Souvenir
Forbidden fruit
Why do so many refuse to shoot woodcock?
Most Read
How religion shapes football fandom
The meaning of football is intertwined with the meaning of faith
Why has Keir Starmer been so unpopular?
He was the perfect embodiment of a failing system
Can Russell T Davies write “terfs”?
In Tip Toe, Russell T Davies is more nuanced than one might expect — much to the dismay of gender ideologues
The martyrdom of Young Bob
On ebbing power of the political influencer
The tears of Keir’s
It was an anticlimactic end to an unconvincing premiership
Bonfire of the fallacies
Two opposing ideas about hard power and foreign policy — legalism and nihilism — are being exposed by the Trump
administration
The pitfalls of epistemic snobbery
The “Sophie of Dundee” case proves that confirmation bias is a double-edged sword
A memo crying in the wilderness
Why does the Church of England now sound like an HR department?
Scotland’s biggest legal scandal
Hundreds of men could have being denied their right to a fair trial because of a justice system that rules important character evidence inadmissible
How the sausage gets made
On the illusions of evidence-based policy
A new course for Cuba
The United States should give up its futile and arrogant dreams of regime change
Good news for the rule of law
Activists who break the law should not be able to appeal to their high-minded motives
Wunderbar wines
The love affair between British and German wine is an ancient one
Marriage and muscular liberalism
The Fury controversy exposes the contradictions behind Britain’s new marriage laws
Keir factor
The prime minister must feel as if he faces the Plagues of Egypt
Dead reckoning
How Britain forgot the sea (and why it matters)