Losing the battle, losing the war
The most pernicious effect of aligning art with political activism is that the distinction between the two is lost
The human condition, in Wales
The universal and the particular sit awkwardly in this Cardiff exhibition
Poland after the wedding
The Polish art scene is stuck in a futile game of tit-for-tat
The decline of beauty
Why has the concept been rejected by the art world?
No second coming for the arts
Labour will finish the Tories’ work of destroying the arts – only “better”
The art world is eating itself
A culture of censorship has devolved into rival attempts at cancellation
Does the Turner Prize still matter?
This year’s exhibition offers a diversity of style if not of ideology
The cathedral and the museum
With declining attendances and a neglect of their core mission, churches and art galleries have much in common
Forever stuck in the nineties
Sarah Lucas and the sexual revolution that wasn’t
The culture war has become the culture
On the discourse and the subject
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Labour’s mercurial kingmaker
The eventful career of Josh Simons, the man who gave up his seat for Andy Burnham
In defence of Lara Bird
There is nothing weird or dishonest about having a dual existence
The hitch with the Hitch
How Christopher Hitchens brought me back to Christ
The ties that bind
A revived society tie has raised thousands for hedgehogs — and reminds us what Britain has lost with the decline of the club tie
Against Northernism
“Northernism” is a superficial form of cultural branding, not a serious political project
By the by-elections
Do not expect major surprises or lasting change as a result of the latest Scottish by-elections
Storycraft is soulcraft
A Game of Thrones, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and heroism after disenchantment
Empire State Madrid
Can a stagnant Spain rediscover the future? Hope lies with its capital
The thin blue line must be thicker
The police are nothing without a presence in communities
Hyperventilating vexillology
Once councils flew the symbols of the realm; now they proclaim the enthusiasms of the age
Worstall’s Corollary
Rare earths expose a fatal flaw at the heart of industrial strategy: governments intervene in systems they do not remotely understand
Confessions of an aging pop queen
Madonna once assured us that being an adult woman was something to aspire to
The dog that failed to bark
Jeremy Corbyn hoped the local
elections would be a launch pad for
his new party. Instead, Your Party
has mostly been arguing with itself
All the Mendelssohn you will ever need
Mendelssohn: Symphonies and Oratorios (Deutsche Grammophon)
First-place Finnish
Shostakovich: Symphony 1; Moscow Cheryomushki (Philharmonia Records)
The Middle Kingdom and the middle powers
China’s clash with Western power shattered its civilisational self-image. Europe is heading for a similar reckoning