The Critics
The eye of the storm
Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque, Vivaldi, The Four Seasons
The original, best and shortest English opera
John Blow, Venus and Adonis; Henry Purcell, Dido and Aeneas (HGO)
Some very healthy early music canaries
Helen Charlston & Toby Carr; Siglo de Oro (LFBM, St John’s, Smith Sq)
Transports de joie
En route back to childhood at the Wallace Collection
Sob stories
Real men have grit in their eye
The decline of the UK art market
The UK’s prominence as a place to buy and sell the most prestigious art is under sustained threat
Pomp and circumstance
A Venetian Coronation, The Gabrieli Consort, St John’s Smith Square
The bacchanalia of Kawanabe Kyōsai
This exhibition at the Royal Academy revels in the artist’s versatility
Dinner in the Bloodlands
Belarus Free Theatre brings moral complexity to the table
Atticus updated
A new Mockingbird is masterful
Two cheers for pedestrianisation
Pedestrianisation cannot solve all of Oxford Street’s problems
Keir’s junk politics
Keir Starmer is trying to reform the public, not the NHS
Wanted: a plan to reform the NHS
No serious party can sit out the ideological battle over the remorseless rise in public spending, including on health
John Swinney’s Isla Bryson moment?
The Scottish Government must be made to face the facts on sex and gender
The problem with petty scandals
They distract us from state failure and institutional decay
The kindest of ghosts
A new history of childhood reading is a treasure
When the music stopped
A reflection on the inexorable decline of arts education and the rise of knee-jerk politics and managerialism
Crossing the public health Rubicon
Are there any limits to statist safetyism?
The Bezos behemoth
Behind the logistics miracle are some troubling stories
Free speech defenders should practice what they preach
There should be no illiberal exception for anti-Zionist academics
Bants means bans
Scarcely any football chants will be allowed under Labour’s new “equality” rules
