Issue: December 2020
Anthology of asininity
Lisa Hilton finds it hard to imagine that this guide will be of actual use to anyone at all
Stars, stripes and dollars
Michael Prodger on the artists who make huge sums for painting the US flag
Crime incorporated
Why is it so hard to put rogue companies in the dock?
Freedom and solitude
Loneliness is not just a side-effect of Coronavirus: it’s been here for a while
Tunes of glory
How do you love a song you disagree with?
The key to the collapse of our cultural self-confidence
Why have our great cultural institutions been among the first to fall?
Unvarnished tyranny
This is perhaps the only book I have yet read about Amin which gives anything like an accurate assessment of who he was
Do not go gently
Opera has treated the subject of cancelling the pleasures of others in some depth
Don’t expect Biden to cut the ballooning US deficit
Under Biden, the US will continue amassing a huge deficit. Is it manageable?
A Royal fogey reassessed
Understanding George and his reign is crucial to our post-progressivist consideration of the history of patriotism
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
Against the scolding mob
MPs have helped to create the puritanism that is now coming for their drinks
The mirage of majesty
Royal charm cannot disguise Britain’s shrinking power in a transactional world
The Hollywood starlet and the immigration albatross
Free marketeers were too content to ignore the negative externalities of immigration
Restoration romps
Purcell, The Musical, OSO Arts Centre, Barnes
Not exiles, but stayers
White South Africans are not abandoning their home
The old age elephant in the room
Does Andy Burnham seriously think that he can fix social care?
Homes for Ukraine — and everywhere else
Why were some non-Ukrainians far more likely to enter Britain under a scheme meant for Ukrainians?
Borne back into the past … of Bolton
Oh no, not another cliche!
What’s so illiberal about “illiberal democracy”?
Viktor Orbán has been a political pioneer in Europe
Can we reduce the manosphere to mental health?
Louis Theroux’s attempt to find the trauma that motivates androcratic influencers is unconvincing
The poetry of Easter
Reason cannot entirely account for the particular and the mysterious