Literary Criticism
Bring back the panjandrums
We need heavyweights to separate good from bad
On Solzhenitsyn’s shoulders
The great writer’s intellectual heirs warn that collective rights obscure individual suffering
Invisible hand
Did peace prevail in the World Wars thanks to providential deliverance, or just a number of very fortunate occurrences?
Brighton crock
Starmer struggles to speak his mind – about his own party
All’s foul in fetishised violence
The feminist fix: Legislators must close the loophole that allows men to claim “rough sex” as an excuse for rape and murder
Paul Hindemith: Mathis symphony (Naxos), Clarinet concerto (Orfeo)
When asked “which Hindemith should I try first?”, I’m lost for an answer
The paradox of free speech
If the Civil Service wants to retain its reputation for political impartiality, then it needs to exclude those who promote only certain kinds of politics
Star power in a parallel universe
West End openings of Constellations and Cinderella offer stage-starved audiences some magic
History hasn’t ended
Francis Fukuyama got it very wrong
The myriad Mona Lisas
How the multiple Mona Lisa copies, and their prices, testify to the longstanding fame of the painting and its mystique
The emperors’ new clothes
Beard emerges with a portrait of the emperors’ afterlives as vivid as the busts themselves
Women’s Labour pains
The Labour Party is in deep trouble over its stance on Self-ID