Issue: February 2023
They’re the toppers
Where to look for perfectly fitting hats and top-notch conversation
Militantly waiting for the end of time
Sunni or Shia, Muslim or Christian, modern or pre-modern — messianism retains a potent attraction
Beyond satire
Opera North and English Touring Opera have plied an honourable trade without trying to gain kudos
My perfect castaway
Robin Ashenden whiled away a forced sojourn in Georgia by feasting on the back catalogue of Desert Island Discs and compiling a list of his favourite guests
Time doesn’t fly in Bianchini’s company
Heilbron writes with authority and – what is more unusual – genuine passion
The Enlightenment as reading project
This book is not a history of ideas, nor book history, nor cultural history, but something much more
Stanley Baldwin, unfairly vilified pragmatist
A leader of great personal qualities
Boats and bombs
A Netflix winner, a Netflix disappointment and a classic American hero on Amazon Prime
A study in radical rhetoric
We can disagree with Annie Ernaux’s politics while saying she deserves her Nobel Prize
A fabulous box of geeky delights
Historic house inventories provide a remarkable insight into building histories
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
The party of retailers
Labour’s drift from its union roots reveals the party no longer knows what — or who — it is for
The sickness of Sickfluencers
Social media and AI are enabling the exploitation of our benefits system
Albion’s re-enactors
Beneath Restore Britain’s rhetoric lies an impulse to retreat from history itself
Profile: Alec Douglas-Home
The quintessential Tory grandee who
was the last of his kind: a politician
motivated by service to his country
Murders for May
From the spa resort of Buddington to the streets of Tokyo
Regulating the rogue degree factories
Do universities have the resources and the will to monitor what is happening in their name?
Drill, baby, drill
We need Cornish lithium and tin just as much as North Sea oil — whatever the nimbys say
Let’s pay MPs less
MPs are getting another inflation-busting pay rise — even as the country they govern grows poorer
Damaged brains and troubled souls
Dana White, of all people, should not be so dismissive of the salience of mental suffering
How the Boat Race sank
Yet another great British tradition is disappearing beneath the waters of history
Campaigners should let assisted suicide go
There is no principled case for using the Parliament Acts to squeeze through assisted suicide