Issue: July 2021
Samuel Beckett
A prize-winning old fraud
Laughing laureate of Western decline
Michel Houellebecq’s prescient, mocking critiques of our debased modern world
In search of the right stuff
Why are there so few conservatively-minded novelists?
After the goldrush
Hannah Betts finds a way to live with her pet hate — denim jeans
Quaffing the cup that cheers
Readers should savour this book, as you might one of the delectable bottles that compose the enticing strophe of the book’s narrative
Pandemic Olympiad
The Tokyo games will be an uncomfortable charade
Goodbye to the Blonds
The generation of idiosyncratic proprietors who changed the face of the British book industry
Tragic hero of Drury Lane
This meticulous account gives Frederick Chatterton a deserved and belated spotlight
Chips with everything
There is a way to serve pasta and potatoes — with garlic
The wisdom of the old traditions
The Unbroken Thread is an engaging and entertaining read — but it feels like a project that’s only just beginning
The police should stop wasting time on tweets
How have we reached the point where expressing your opinion can consign you to a Kafkaesque nightmare?
How NatCon was saved
An attempted cancellation flopped in Brussels — but the bad taste remains
The problem with prescriptions
Concerns about over-prescription should not be trivialised or problematised
What on Earth are the Conservatives running on?
Rishi Sunak needs a vision for the country, not just anti-Starmer posturing
Singers have a voice, too
Study of the Western canon is often reduced to a politicised debate: power and patronage versus individual genius. The truth is far more complex
Here be flagons
The temperance campaigners realised that a picture can achieve more than a thousand words of argument
Reject Naominomics
Ideas like Naomi Klein’s are bad for the economy (and for the environment)
In praise of centibillionaires
When people are free to make a lot of money from new businesses, everybody wins
The soullessness of “social mobility”
Underprivileged young people need culture, not just “skills”
Weak, flawed, limited; an opportunity missed
Sanghera really should have devoted more attention to the pre-Western history in Empireworld
What price justice?
Small disputes involving ordinary people are not a waste of the courts’ time
