Books
The game of laughter
A backstage look at stand-up comedy
Murders for the New Year
A dark start to 2023
Inescapable crisis
Have our worn-out imaginations reached their limits?
The fatal hubris of a ruthless fixer
Peter Stothard’s penetrating biography could not be more apposite in this age of political turmoil
Strongholds and strong women
Three non-fiction works beat out the general mediocrity of 2022
Standing tall on an uncluttered horizon
The best new fiction of 2022
The madness of crowds
Andrew Doyle has been warning about Critical Social Justice for years, and he kept the receipts
Anglican age of a thousand churches
The Church of England offered a necessary bulwark against the tempests of change
Princeton’s friend of the Iranian people
Reza Aslan’s flawed account is better than nothing
A magisterial study of war and strategy
Jeremy Black deals a fatal blow to Napoleon’s reputation as a military genius
Most Read
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
Two false dawns
Anger can furnish a movement with energy, but not with votes
We must get serious about anti-Jewish terror
Britain faces a dangerous rise in anti-Jewish violence and must get real about its implications
Art: my part in its downfall
Pierre d’Alancaisez was part of the
contemporary art world’s inner circle until
he saw the error of his ways
Good news for the rule of law
Activists who break the law should not be able to appeal to their high-minded motives
Wilde times at the country house
Gerald Barry’s outrageous The Importance of Being Earnest manages to overmatch the virtuoso original
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 promises of politicians
We are surrounded by lies, euphemisms and deceit
The price is right
Stories about outrageously profligate eating have the appeal of scandal
Undramatic life of a literary also-ran
Malcolm Cowley never understood very much about literature
Not so good after all
Can left-leaning journalists finally acknowledge the challenges British society faces?
Manchesterism is dead in the water
Andy Burnham already appears to have abandoned hope for meaningful change