Literature
Sex and violence: Titian’s Metamorphoses
The National Gallery are reopening their headline 2020 exhibition on 8th July
Brideshead Revisited at 75
In its combination of glacial beauty and lovelorn desperation, Brideshead Revisited speaks to all readers, Alexander Larman writes
‘You’ll be a Man, my son!’
Rudyard Kipling’s (in)famous poem “If” reverberates with valuably relevant and humane advice for 2020 Britain
Decline of the English novel
Bereft of God and middle class values, authors are left with identity politics
Jane’s profound piety
Jeremy Black reviews Jane Austen: Writing, Society, Politics, by Tom Keymer
Sebastian Horsley: equal parts Byronic dandy, Dickensian grotesque and Wildean poseur
Alexander Larman remembers his time with the decadent author, Sebastian Horsley, 10 years after his death
What the Dickens!
150 years since Dickens’s death, Alexander Larman evaluates the memorialised writer’s questionable politics
Me, Myself and I
The hip young authors who write about their greatest obsession – themselves
Rail tracks
Tom Chesshyre on songs and poetry inspired by trains
Where is the Waugh or Wodehouse of our time?
Comic writing: light distraction or social mirror?
A cruel choice
Today’s euthanasia bill risks sending Britain down a dark path
Ministry of Silly Thoughts
Wes Streeting made the grave error of consulting the British people
Bonfire of the verities
Plotting a path through the new politics
The death of an Anglo-Hungarian Painting
Nine months after a savage act of vandalism at Trinity College Cambridge, anger is growing at its lacklustre response
We have to rebalance civil society
To influence power, we must organise
Is “progressive realism” either?
Weighing up the rights and wrongs of the Lammy Doctrine
Doublespeak about assisted suicide
The campaign for assisted suicide is distinctly Orwellian
October letters
Misquoting Shakespeare and a rounded sense of humour
Izzy Hardcastle
Ornament of the book-world
An abuser hiding in plain sight
There was shock when a feted theatre director turned out to be a paedophile who collected child rape porn but were the clues there all along?
Reparate good times, come on!
The Critic’s Extremely Factual Guide to Slavery Reparations the UK Most Definitely Owes
