Issue: May 2026
Europe’s French nuclear shield?
With the NATO alliance under threat, will
Europe really trust President Macron’s
offer of a pan-EU nuclear deterrent?
Quinlan Terry
He kept the flame of classicism alive at a time when it burnt very low
A criminal abuse of the law
Our criminal justice system is deferential to those who abuse it while coming down hard on the innocent
Class war in the upper house
The end of the Lords’ ancient
right to resolve peerage disputes
is the latest casualty of Labour’s
constitutional vandalism
Are Reform the new Greens?
As the Green Party loses interest in rural matters, Richard Negus considers the claim that British agriculture and the countryside have a new champion
Beauty from the ruins of war
Painting gave artists and their viewers a temporary way out of the grim wartime reality
Broken windows
If small instances of disorder are neglected, greater ones will soon be committed
The Boston barbarians
The Boston Symphony acted like a New Orleans nightclub owner with a recalcitrant pole-dancer
The forlorn hope of growth
Voters are struggling economically but wrongly believe the country to be rich
No, the King has not converted
A bizarre conspiracy theory
that Charles III is a Muslim is
easily shown to be false
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
Drill, baby, drill
We need Cornish lithium and tin just as much as North Sea oil — whatever the nimbys say
Dignified design for the people
A book that asks all the right questions but hasn’t thought through all the answers
American crusades
Populism is susceptible to foreign lobbies and crusading delusions
All the single ladies
Instead of trying to persuade reluctant women into motherhood, policymakers should focus on helping enthusiastic parents have larger families
The story of a lifetime
Whole life novels lay bare the randomness and haphazardness of life
Anyone could have predicted
Left-leaning commentators should not pretend to be surprised by the consequences of multiculturalism
Don’t bet against the SNP
The complete ineptitude of their rivals has kept them at the top of Scottish politics
Wunderbar wines
The love affair between British and German wine is an ancient one
A moment of profound national unseriousness
Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch know that the world faces crises — but are they part of the crises?
Carry on, matron
The crisis in nursing can be reversed by a return to Florence Nightingale’s vision of vocation and a rebuilt hierarchy on the wards
The pathologies of outdated ideologies
Our managerial elite will go the way of the Mamluks, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Moriori