Album Review
Music of hypnotic power
Thomas Larcher: The Living Mountain (ECM New Series)
A conviction singer who convinces
Folk Songs: Magdalena Kozena/Simon Rattle (Pentatone)
A Wodehousian pick-me-up
Noel Coward and Friends: A Marvellous Party (Signum Classics)
Christmas, irresistibly
Lise Davidsen: Christmas from Norway (Decca)/Miracle of Miracles (Cedille)
Notes of promise
Bruce Liu: Waves (Deutsche Grammophon)
A giant dipper of delights
BBC Legends Volume 4 (ICA Classics)
A celebration of redemption
Handel: Israel in Egypt (Avie)
Over-simplified and underpowered
Shostakovich symphonies 2, 3, 12, 13 (DG)
Flickering with fire and ice
Beethoven: 1st piano concerto, &c (DG)
The world’s last measured moments
Joseph Haydn: Symphonies 93-95
Welcome to butter mountain
Labour’s extraordinary predicted majority might disappear almost as quickly as it arrives
A commanding life
Iron Imperator: Roman Grand Strategy Under Tiberius. By Iskander Rehman
Nesta, I detest ya
An engine of innovation has become a puddle of inanity
Commonwealth citizens should not be allowed to vote
Newly arrived non-citizens being allowed to vote makes a farce of British democracy
The first futurist
There is more to Daniel Defoe than Moll Flanders and Robinson Crusoe
Mutilation theology
Asserting mastery over their future selves is a feature of mastectomy, not a bug
July letters
Tory trans activists and franchise folly
The Golden Age of jockeys
Ryan Moore is most racing professionals’ idea of the best jockey in the world
Doing something can be worse than doing nothing
The Gaza pier and the failings of a “do something” foreign policy
Small boats and big problems
The asylum issue is not going away, and Keir Starmer must face it soon
The stories of a cemetery
There is much to learn about human life in a graveyard
