Playing politics
The Critic’s crack team of writers take you through the latest video games, inspired by real events
Riefenstahl: artist or propagandist?
Riefenstahl is a standing refutation of the comforting myth that great art only comes from the good guys
Ed Davey in rat-infested custard
Even torture wouldn’t stop Davey from voting for cleaner streets and better-run councils
Starmer chameleon
He comes and goes, he comes and goes
Sede vacante
The Critic has been canvassing our top sources for suggestions on the new Pope
A hell of a movie
Warfare rejects the usual tropes of its genre
Sci-fi satire Mickey 17 misses the mark
There is a good short film here, inside a long bad one
Steel yourselves
Summoned from our ploughs, and our lawnmowers, to seize the means of production
The coming apart of the deal
Keir Starmer’s attempts to be optimistic about Trump are convincing no one
Peston’s Inbox
Let’s do a “war leader Keir” photo op
Most Read
Tame Impala fails to impress
unconquered by a
taste of Crusader food
A shameful Bill
Labour is spectacularly failing the British people on immigration
Going Green
A day out with Zack Polanski and friends
What is wrong now was wrong before
Julia Gillard should not pretend that the “unintended consequences” of the gender debate were unknowable
Pleasure and persuasion
Jean Sibelius: Symphonies 1-7 (Ondine)
So long, Socrates
Socrates turned relentless questioning into a way of life — and paid for it with his own
Jolly boating weather
The Gondoliers, English Touring Opera, Hackney Empire
Parade of defeats
Armenia is a democracy tearing itself apart over who gets to define the soul of a nation
Final Analysis
The real measure of a degree
The spy chief who sold us Blue Nun
Raise a glass to a long life, very well lived
Sir David Attenborough at sea
RRS Sir David Attenborough is a ship worthy of the great man’s name
A love-hate affair
Finger-lingering over hideous fluffy lilac footwear
Selling the commons
How Britain put a price on nature
A culture of death
Street gangs and online provocation are fuelling a morbid subculture in British life
The fateful road to the great dictators
Weimar Germany / Red Dawn Over China
Reset as usual
Labour’s problem is not messaging, presentation or leadership — it is that the party lacks the appetite for the reforms Britain demands