Issue: October 2024
The age of reason, sliced and diced
No historian wields Ockham’s razor more effectively than J.C.D. Clark
Why can’t there be more vampires?
Bloodsucking, in various more or less metaphorical guises, is after all opera’s happiest place
A beguiling star who loved melodrama
Taylor’s hunger for money, flashy gizmos and flashier gewgaws found its echo in Burton’s need to forsake the classics
Bursary school
Refuse to play the poverty card
Tragedy, comedy and an Italian parable
Three great novels capture a moment of change for society
Take a bow
This season’s must-have neckwear is a sartorial two-fingered salute to life
An intelligent book on AI? Very nearly
The threat from AI comes from humans placing too much faith in complex but fallible systems
Oasis: the good boys of rock and roll
For guitar bands since punk, there’s been a tension between credibility and success
Farewell to Larry Siedentop
The great political philosopher, Oxford don, and sage defender of Western liberalism
Sean Scully in France
He’s been showered with honours and awards — yet plenty of people can’t stand his work
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
Welcome to the low-trust economy
The multi-billion pound cost of Britain’s shoplifting surge
The emperor’s new AI
A satirical X account is doing what the media class has failed to do, and report on the great AI delusion
Under the volcano
As Sicilians say, Mamma Etna gives more than she takes away
Questionably loyal opposition
A “rainbow coalition” between Conservatives and the Greens raises questions about the state of the Tories
We need to make a better case against Magic Monetary Theory
Simplistic rebuttals help MMT endure. We need better arguments
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?
Institutional feminism against women
The likes of Julia Gillard and Jess Phillips have enabled misogyny
A crippling consensus
Labour, the Greens and the Lib Dems are singing from the same destructive hymn sheet
Zelda Zingari
Arty types: the fashionable poet
Beauty from the ruins of war
Painting gave artists and their viewers a temporary way out of the grim wartime reality
“You can’t preach here!”
A hostile attitude towards preaching threatens freedom of religion and freedom of speech