British Art
Death by a thousand cuts
The near-invisibility of the Proms on BBC TV is a symptom of the collapse of public service broadcasting in Britain
The second life of Tracey Emin
A brush with death has revitalised her work
Do the arts need policy?
Decoupling creativity from policy might give art ambition again
Remnant Rubens
A provincial folk artist offers an alternative view of Georgian society
A monumental work on British buildings
Gavin Stamp’s posthumous book is a magnificent tour d’horizon, a bible of the styles available to architects between the wars
God save The Kinks
How did four ornery lads rearing up from the post-war English underclass become national treasures?
The sad state of British film
Why do we accept comfortable irrelevance?
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Symphonies 7 & 9 (Hallé)
VW will never catch on beyond Anglophiles — ask not the reason why
We have forgotten the titans of British cinema
It has fallen to Scorsese to rescue the reputation of Powell and Pressburger
Genuine English opera
‘Peter Grimes’ labours under the weight of national anxieties
End of the Long Peace?
Our technological and institutional sophistication will not eliminate conflict
More than one way to skin a cat
The thing about formulae is that they’re an aid, not a guide
Up-and-down towns
The rise and fall of English towns in the 1960s and 80s
4B and the futility of heteropessimism
Romance is painful but it is also possible
Impressive yet unmoving
Franz Schmidt: 4 symphonies (Naxos)
Disability is not an identity
Long before trans rights lobby, disability activists were denying biological reality
The art of violence
High jinks in the Groucho Club are small beer when compared to the misdeeds of their artist ancestors
How Australia punished smokers and normalised firebombs
Smoking restrictions have fuelled the Australian tobacco wars
Resist Labour’s managerial revolution
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are grimly committed to expanding the state and entrenching bureaucracy
Labour’s insecurity counsel
A strategy of concession and apology will not build Britain’s soft power
Rewiring the state
Kemi Badenoch has a plan, though what it involves is anyone’s guess
