Michel Houellebecq
Laughing laureate of Western decline
Michel Houellebecq’s prescient, mocking critiques of our debased modern world
The twin prophets of pessimism
The novelist and the philosopher linked by a common fascination with despair
The Great Vladsby
Like Gatsby, Putin’s self-destructive nostalgia will be his undoing
Bad Law Project?
The good, the bad, and the ugly of crowdfunding legal cases
A Hitch in time
Our Falklands correspondent muses on the importance of the war to the late journalist
Tortured hero of the Giro
The Italian rapscallion
Gustav Mahler: 4th symphony (Pentatone)
A new recording of Mahler’s smallest symphony is “indispensable” to connoisseurs of his music
Another Elizabeth, a second Anne
In our secular age the Queen has been Anglicanism’s most compelling representative
Tube strikes aren’t socialist
Why do so many on the Left back poor quality public services?
How do you solve a problem like the protocol?
The apotheosis of Johnsonism
Don’t mention the war
It’s wrong to cite the Ukraine conflict as the principal cause of soaring prices
The Colston 4 and the fog of law
The politicised trial of the Bristol statue topplers shows the law surrounding protests is mired in confusion
Some very healthy early music canaries
Helen Charlston & Toby Carr; Siglo de Oro (LFBM, St John’s, Smith Sq)