Issue: January/February 2021
Slow death of the know-it-all
Peter Burke’s new book helpfully provokes the reader to think about the proper place of a broad education in an age unfriendly to polymathy
Cheer leaders
Opera unswervingly believes in the potential for a divine spark in humans, says Robert Thicknesse
A lighter shade of grey
This scholarly, readable and objective book will be the standard biography of Sir Edward Grey for decades to come
From disaster to opportunity
London’s orchestral rat-race will have fewer runners when musical life returns, says Norman Lebrecht
Diego Maradona was not a victim
We have no sense of the tragic, only of victimhood, says Theodore Dalrymple
Fact or Fiction: an introductory guide
As the misrepresentations in The Crown call for historical dramas to be clearer in their creative license, Romeo Coates offers a brieg guide to fact and fiction in drama
Power to the pigs and les keufs
France is competing with the UK to be every bit as draconian and liberty-infringing
Unproductive investment
Rishi Sunak boasts a hugerise in public spending. That must mean big tax increases
Queer as a Chocolate Orange
Dominic Green takes us through the history of the word “Queer”
It’s all a conspiracy
It’s not fair that Remain lost or that Trump won, once. These things are unconscionable and therefore diabolical
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
We’ve had enough agitslop
British TV drama has become an embarrassing display of liberal neuroses
Welsh Labour is doomed
New scandals will speed up its decline into irrelevance
Most of the world thinks differently to us
Universalism is based on irrational ideas about human nature
Shining a light on the culture wars
Without the reintroduction of liberal ethical standards, the sacred purpose of academia cannot survive
The shadow of the thorn tree
Christian culture must combine tradition and modernity
Gradually, then suddenly
You don’t expect everything to change until it does
It’s what you Makerfield of it
Andy Burnham may yet stop Reform, but victory would raise almost as many questions for Labour as defeat.
Let’s pay MPs less
MPs are getting another inflation-busting pay rise — even as the country they govern grows poorer
The dog that failed to bark
Jeremy Corbyn hoped the local
elections would be a launch pad for
his new party. Instead, Your Party
has mostly been arguing with itself
It’s time to ban the Brotherhood
Britain can no longer afford to ignore the Muslim Brotherhood’s quiet but far-reaching influence
Who will pound longest?
America has military might — but does it have the appetite for war?