Issue: April 2024
A great conductor leaves the stage
No conductor from China or Japan ever commanded world orchestras before Seiji Ozawa, and none has since matched his impact
Off with the fairies
Unsurprisingly, the most brilliant of all English music-theatre pieces are mostly overlooked
Rock as ritual
Just as Taylor has nailed the emotional lexicon of her people, Finn has nailed it for his
First impressions
The first Impressionist exhibition was no obscure bit of posturing, but artistic sedition
Snook dazzles as Dorian Gray
Wilde’s preoccupation with beauty and artifice brings a sassy Victorian immorality tale into our own times
Long story short
Movie length seems to have become a way for directors to tell us what serious people they are
The stench of Chanel No 5
Set mainly in Nazi-occupied Paris, The New Look tells the story of Coco Chanel and Christian Dior
Too much disinformation
Mariana Spring is back, with another series to set the songbirds a-twitter
Politics with the depth of a puddle
A month of politically-minded podcasts has reached its exhausting apogee
The building that inspired Orwell
Was there an appetite at the time for monumental buildings, equivalent to those in Moscow?
Most Read
American strategy in Iran is wiser than it seems
President Trump’s intervention will leave the world safer than it was
Saint Nicola
Nicola Sturgeon wants sympathy for her husband’s crimes—but after years spent avoiding awkward questions, her latest reinvention may be the hardest sell yet.
The lonely death of Henry Nowak
We must draw lessons from a horrendous and disgraceful case
Rewatching the English
English identity has become too surreal and discomfiting to define
A failed war on fags
The black market has taken over the tobacco trade Down Under
Don’t bet against the SNP
The complete ineptitude of their rivals has kept them at the top of Scottish politics
Soft competition
There are participation prizes to everyone at the Venice Biennale
Andy Burnham’s immigration double game
Andy Burnham might make sceptical noises about mass migration but they mean nothing in practice
Paean to a green and pleasant land
The finest living example of that perennial English type, the countryman-writer
A profound Tory
Simon Heffer’s biography of Enoch Powell very much deserves revisiting
The sickness of Sickfluencers
Social media and AI are enabling the exploitation of our benefits system
Welsh Labour is doomed
New scandals will speed up its decline into irrelevance
London vs the rest of the country
The publishing industry should aim to be more provincial and less metropolitan
Britain must maintain its cultural inheritance
We should not allow our masterpieces to disappear overseas
The price is right
Stories about outrageously profligate eating have the appeal of scandal
A crippling consensus
Labour, the Greens and the Lib Dems are singing from the same destructive hymn sheet