The Critics
Ends of empires
Two compulsive, immersive and vivid end-of-empire series
Day of the junta
Political thrillers from South America
Pulp Puccini
Having the hots for Tosca
Ship of fools
A summer of ecstatic, eccentric and not-so-operatic audiences at opera fringe
Take the Bizkit
How Woodstock ’99 foreshadowed the MAGA masses of 2016
A bumpy flight
Sheridan’s The Rivals plot is taken to different heights
No common or garden sculptor
Canova’s influence on cultural heritage should not be overlooked
In search of the real Mahler
How Mahler’s music is about living in the moment
Feelbad anthem
Liz Truss does indeed “move on out”
Doctor in a spin
West End zingers on stage now
Most Read
Why they hated Ann Widdecombe
Fair-minded people could agree or disagree with her opinions. Left-wing bigots hated her for not abandoning them
Amnesty irrational
Gender identity ideologues cannot get away with baseless smears any more
A chaplain’s vindication
The case of Dr Bernard Randall has exposed the rot in our institutions
The myth of banned books
If transgression is fun and easy, it is probably not transgressive
The case against recognising Somaliland
The Somaliland lobby is being dangerously naive about the realities of the region
I’m so over Exposed
Exposed: The Rise of Extreme Porn and How We Fight Back by Clare McGlynn
Taylor’s Version of feminism
Taylor Swift’s marriage is less a retreat from feminism than its logical conclusion
Standing up for cultural freedom
We must follow the example of brave artists who oppose censorship
Selling desirability
It is truthful to sell art as a luxury accessory
The errata of history
Misprints are just one in a catalogue of literary disorders
The importance of ancestry
Remembering a great scholar of nationalism
The knife and the bone
After war and repression, Iranian dissidents believe the regime’s reckoning is near — but Tehran’s influence reaches far beyond its borders
Cosmonaut thriller is absolutely stellar
Strong characters drive Star City forward in an increasingly paranoid hothouse of fear, betrayal and adultery
Operatic satire is a Shaw thing
The old Art has an armoury of skunk-like defence mechanisms to keep the unwashed at bay
The end of Peel’s police?
She invokes a vanished age of policing, but Shabana Mahmood’s reforms point towards a more continental model of policing
Our AI overlords will end bigotry
Bring on the machines