On Television
Toffs, trials and tradecraft
The best police procedurals unpeel the place where the drama unfolds
Rebus at the school of hard Knox
The tropes are popular, because they work
The slain in Spain, and Belfast again
This police drama tidies up loose ends just enough, but still leaves the viewers wanting more
Walter’s Arctic Circle is a winner
Welcome to a kaleidoscopic showcase of topical dramas in vivid settings
The untalented Mx. Ripley
In a story of a fiendishly successful performance, Eliot Sumner proved an extremely unconvincing man
The stench of Chanel No 5
Set mainly in Nazi-occupied Paris, The New Look tells the story of Coco Chanel and Christian Dior
War on Nazis in Oz and in the air
LeBor reviews Our Dad the Nazi Killer and Masters of the Air
Good cops and bad spies
Intelligence services as portrayed on-screen are pretty ghastly places to work
Weekends à la mode
Living Architecture is opening minds and changing taste
Taking on ISIS and Eichmann
Covering a French spy thriller, a documentary on Eichmann and a British government drama
Hatred without end
A year on from October 7th, mutual dehumanisation and refusal of moral responsibility characterises our “debate” over the Gaza war
The NHS need not depend on immigration
The shortage of British trainees is the result of a political choice
The secret diary of a parly staffer
Time to find something more productive for mediocre graduates to do
Roger Scruton’s naive nationalism
Cultural nationalism is an ill-fitting model for the modern nation state
Letters August-September
To paraphrase the Jeremy Corbyn defence, were the Tory Right present but not involved?
How short is an arm in the arts?
ACE’s politicisation goes back all the way to the Blair government
In defence of the incredulous stare
To argue is to indulge in a practice, with all that this entails
Post-truth medicine
Gender clinics offer a charade that relies on the symbols of evidence-based medicine
The porn Olympics
Porn puts young men and women in a degrading race that most of them are doomed to lose — so why are athletes lending it credibility?
On the death of pets
It is not losing a human, but it is losing a loved one
Lawless and disordered
British police and courts increasingly struggle to maintain public order
