Critics
Wanted: classical music influencers
Expert, well-dressed, wisecracking reviewers once delivered first-night juice
Podcasters: do as I say, not as I do
Sometimes the best advice is simply not to go on a podcast
Enter stage right
Our new theatre critic promises to be fair and unmoved by doctrinaire groupthink
Clickbait criticism
A depressing, inarticulate complaint of a generation too paralysed even to make art
We are the cultural Norns
Here, at last, is a mind-expanding podcast that is the antidote to everything the wretched Arts Council stands for
Criticising the critics
Ideology has triumphed over art
Singing lessons
Spare us the social justice preaching
Rats desert a thriving ship
The space for criticism to exist grows smaller and the archways that sustained its presence crumble away, laments Sarah Ditum
Most Read
The martyrdom of Young Bob
On ebbing power of the political influencer
Grooming gangs and the truth
We should not give ammunition to deniers of the grooming gangs scandal
Why has Keir Starmer been so unpopular?
He was the perfect embodiment of a failing system
Babies need women
Leaving children with only men who are not their parents is foolish and dangerous
Stop ignoring the Islamisation of our democracy
The British state is bending to Islamism, not attempting to defeat it
Beyond Carmen
Georges Bizet: The piano works (Hyperion)
Reclaiming the rule of law
The rule of law was meant to protect liberty — not to be weaponised against democracy
Escape to the country
Some tractor-acceptance meditation might help with moving day
Jolly boating weather
The Gondoliers, English Touring Opera, Hackney Empire
A love-hate affair
Finger-lingering over hideous fluffy lilac footwear
Britain lacks a party of the young
Britain’s alienated young are drifting leftwards because no serious movement on the right is speaking to their interests
Kemi at the crossroads
Kemi Badenoch cannot tell everybody what they want to hear
Hurry hurry to Chop Chop
Gambling on Cantonese cuisine
Entebbe and the Israeli way of war
Fifty years after Israel’s most audacious hostage rescue, its legacy still shapes how the country understands security, citizenship and war
The joys of village cricket
Cricket embodies much of what is valuable about our culture
Why left-wingers should care about borders
A welfare state, and social solidarity, depend on immigration restrictionism