English Literature
Why do we like Larkin so much?
On a love with limits
Virginia Woolf: Teflon goddess of the trivial
She was nasty, crude, racist and often a poor writer — so why is she revered?
Why we need a new movement
The timid world of BritLit needs to be shaken up by a mutinous new clique of writers
Keep calm and le Carré on
His pessimism about Britain proved untrue — and its own kind of comforting fantasy
A spy for all seasons
Who is the man behind “The IPCRESS File”?
Literature’s year zero
One hundred years ago two literary masterpieces changed the literary world forever
Tom’s curious heirs
Lincoln Allison says the torrent of popular school stories that followed Tom Brown’s Schooldays inverted its central message of Christian reform
The Bard of Balliol
Never has a man turned so little knowledge to such great account
A most unreliable culture warrior
Not reactionary, just drawn that way
Ghosts at the feast
Christmas ghost stories are meditations on darkness at the darkest point of the year
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
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
Why has Keir Starmer been so unpopular?
He was the perfect embodiment of a failing system
The fog of facts
As elections approach, voters are forced to navigate a swamp of spin, distortion, and inaccessible data.
All the single ladies
Instead of trying to persuade reluctant women into motherhood, policymakers should focus on helping enthusiastic parents have larger families
What is the CID for?
Zac Brettler’s short life and mysterious death
Manchesterism is dead in the water
Andy Burnham already appears to have abandoned hope for meaningful change
A revolutionary king
The monarch’s vision of “harmony” will have lasting impact
The false filibuster framing
There was nothing undemocratic about resistance to the Assisted Dying Bill
A.E. Housman
The poet is less read than he once was but his deep love of England still resonates
Out with the old?
Reform seems to be thriving, and Labour seems to be losing, but what can actually change?
Nowhere left to go
Labour is running out of cash, authority and time.
Brexit was not an act of economic self-harm
Whatever you have heard, UK-EU trade is doing just fine
The old age elephant in the room
Does Andy Burnham seriously think that he can fix social care?