The lost art of the Christmas single
The great Christmas singles came from the broken remains of a country that had forgotten how to be itself
Reclaiming Becket
London’s great saint needs a reboot
Billy Liar was fiction’s first OCD hero, yet nobody noticed
Rev Steve Morris revisits Keith Waterhouse’s forgotten classic
A heavenly perspective
Thoughts on the plague with St Pauls’ greatest dean, John Donne
The wrong kind of groupthink
Why do so many economists deny that the value of money is related to its quantity?
Man of letters: reading between the lines
Byron: A Life in Ten Letters by Andrew Stauffer
The reality of tobacco control
To have a law does not mean that it will be respected
From cholera to coronavirus
A forgotten novel offers insights into living with a deadly and dehumanising pandemic
Must we keep failing universities alive?
History is full of institutions which could not justify their own existence
Queen of Hearts
Perturbed to find Diana has a starring role in Celebrity Help! My House is Haunted
Campus confidential
Inside the secret Cambridge societies hiding their unfashionable views
Pen pusher
My fascination with fountain pens
Entering the populist Pyongyang
Your correspondent watches the far right debate immigration — but will he go native?
Dumbing down the priesthood
Unless the Church reinstates rigorous college-based training for clerics, it will wither away
A sharp satire perfect for Critic readers
We should be giving copies of this magazine away at every screening
