Meg Hillier
The questioning of women
Answers are the hardest words to say
Literary festivals: sheer hell in a tent
To make people laugh for an hour is good business sense — but it says nothing about writing, or creativity, or art
Covid amnesty for everyone but the politicians
MPs made their bed, but that doesn’t mean we have to lie in it
Putin’s big parade
Campaign Diary: Expect extra chest-thumping on “Soviet Victory Day”
The man tennis failed
Baron Gottfried von Cramm: the Third Reich dissident Wimbledon left behind
A game of thrones
Shelley Puhak’s woman-versus-woman rivalry between queens is only part of the story
The Critic Books Podcast: Cult writers
How does a writer become a figure of cultish renown?
The birds and the beef
Far from being an ecological enemy, cattle-grazing encourages natural diversity and helps in the battle to save some of our most endangered species
Getting wrecked
Dame Ethel Smyth’s opera dated quickly, but it hardly hurts to have another look at it
The King is our eternal everyman
Oak Apple Day celebrates the inevitable return of the primordial and the perennial
The renewal of Englishness
Journalist James Cowley builds a national identity from an excavation of incidents
Last swipe at the Proms
Is it time to give a grudging nod of acknowledgement to the BBC Proms?