History
Are empires always evil?
Daniel Johnson says Spanish imperialism left a legacy defying simplistic analysis
Evelyn Waugh was right: British politics went wrong in the 1920s
Why do Waugh’s political works remain either caricatured or ignored?
Farewell to Utopia
An erudite call to return to a more sceptical and prudential kind of politics
Big Brother versus liberty
Firmin DeBrabander’s philosophical musings are the checklist of a left-wing, “progressive” academic
10 years of Downton Abbey
What insights can period dramas give us into the past?
The making of Donald Trump
In his new book, Gerald Seib asks whether the turn towards nationalism and populism in the US is permanent
Whatever happened to the polymath?
Professor Jeremy Black talks to The Critic’s political editor, Graham Stewart, about the idea of the Renaissance Man
Track rate
Tom Chesshyre has a soft spot for railway hotels
Rich and red: The USSR’s prize assets
The wealthy young Americans who laboured for decades to help the communist cause
Black’s History Week
The Critic’s new weekly podcast series, with Professor Jeremy Black
Most Read
The establishment is still living in an immigration fantasy land
It is influential left-wingers, not the broader public, who have deluded themselves on mass migration
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.
On Britain as a capitalist command economy
It is neither neoliberal nor socialist but a secret third thing
Rewatching the English
English identity has become too surreal and discomfiting to define
Reset as usual
Labour’s problem is not messaging, presentation or leadership — it is that the party lacks the appetite for the reforms Britain demands
The chairwoman of the board
A story driven at a whip-crack pace, pulsing with manic energy and nail-biting
Badgers, banknotes and British decline
Ed Davey might admire Winston Churchill but he should have learned from him
The malicious and the mad
Two recent productions offer two different perspectives on dark sides of masculinity
Food pairing is folly
A warning against trying to match wine to dish
The problem of midwit misinformation
Iran, insurance and how smart people lose sight of the truth
Laughing to hide the tears
Beware: prime ministerial jokes ahead
Terry tackles literary lightweights
Is a distinguished professor right to hold intellectual biography in low esteem?
Why are doctors special?
Doctors have a lot less to complain about than other workers
Britain’s AI gamble reeks of desperation
The government is betting it all on AI — it could lose our trousers
Britain in 1776
What does it mean to be living through history?