Issue: August/September 2022
Old and new
Regenerating existing neighbourhoods vs. attracting international attention: the two most prominent current approaches to urban planning
On HM service
Hannah Betts hails Hayley Menzies’s gear for grown-ups
A silent crook
The recent restoration of Erich von Stroheim’s Foolish Wives shows that the original movie is astonishingly modern
The case of the legless duchess
A tale that proves the media and the public still thrill to an art theft
Some like it chilled
Summer is the perfect time for cold soup
An American’s excellent essays
A set of fine programmes on the American bohemians who brought to life a great city on the cusp of significant change
Flatpack classic
Summer theatre where anything, including a return to rehearsal-room Brechtian, goes
Music to die for
The elegant narrative solution of suicide has had no greater cheerleader than opera
A Yiddish colossus
Isaac Bashevis Singer would never have submitted to today’s ideological edicts
Rugger’s buggered
The more money has come into rugby, the more dismal the spectacle has become
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
Scotland’s cold and durable fire
John Swinney is proving that in politics what matters most is simply showing up
A new course for Cuba
The United States should give up its futile and arrogant dreams of regime change
Is Keir Starmer failing?
To fail at something, he would have to do something
Literature amid lies
Leonardo Sciascia sought justice in the face of cynicism
“Fauxcest” is not a free speech issue
The government should ban this dangerous and disgusting genre
Why 1776 matters to modern Britain
The American founding is a case study in peaceful regime change
The story of a lifetime
Whole life novels lay bare the randomness and haphazardness of life
Borne back into the past … of Bolton
Oh no, not another cliche!
Infamous five
To most of us, the Cambridge Five are just names
The Symphony’s Indian summer
Imagine hearing a symphony for the first time
Leaving it all in the ring
The great British bullfighting hopeful, Alexander Paul