Issue: August/September 2023
Coles to Newcastle
Showbiz vicars, lefty luvvies and a brush with death
Hunting ghost ponds
The loss of a rich wildfowl habitat
A chest full of medals
A clever take on a classic brasserie in the heart of Bridgerton London
Not having a gay old time
On BBC radio’s preoccupation with Americans and identity politics.
All aboard the ship of self-improvement
Why did NYU withdraw its support before the Floating University had left port?
J’adore les bleus
Antoine Dupont makes the game look easy
All action, no abstraction
On the hunks and lunks who dominated two decades of Hollywood
The lovelorn lady who broke the rules
A romantic forced by peculiar privilege into perpetual masquerade
A triumph of light and space
The success of the re-opened National Portrait Gallery.
Searching for a radical alternative
Two new titles join a burgeoning chorus of populist lament
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
Farewell to an intellectual giant
Patrick Nash pays tribute to the late
David Abulafia, fastidious champion of
Oxbridge’s academic standards
Progressivism and the police
The Diversity, Equality and Inclusion agenda promised a fairer form of policing, but has delivered a weaker one
Exactly my bag
Travel they say, broadens the mind. It can also empty the pockets
Tolerating the intolerant — and the intolerable
The right’s refusal to confront political Islam has helped entrench it in Britain
Profile: Alec Douglas-Home
The quintessential Tory grandee who
was the last of his kind: a politician
motivated by service to his country
Britain’s AI gamble reeks of desperation
The government is betting it all on AI — it could lose our trousers
Gender self-ID was never the law
Barrister Akua Reindorf KC speaks about the controversial trans guidance the government is so loath to implement
Marketing masters
Catching the eye of a buyer in the social media era
The radical feminism—Christianity pipeline
For radical feminists, clarity about the realities of sex often opens onto a search for moral order
The trains have to run
Populists have had success in persuading people that they can govern — but can they actually govern?
Literature amid lies
Leonardo Sciascia sought justice in the face of cynicism