Music
Outwards and inwards
Drawing the ear into every era of western music
The missing dimension
Warning: contains passages of symphonic transcendence
Midnight’s mass
Taylor Swift’s talent for ordinariness that makes her the most exceptional artist at work today
Not so easy listening
Janacek, Brahms, Bartok: Violin sonatas (Alpha-Classics/Outhere)
Top of the polls
Starmer’s cult of impersonality is frustrating Labour Leninists everywhere
New tunes from a hatful of old songs
We approach Dylan’s both peerless and wildly uneven catalogue only through the after-image of his dazzling prime
Inquest into the death of ENO
The cause of death, in this coroner’s verdict, is a prolonged failure to address reality
In search of the real Mahler
How Mahler’s music is about living in the moment
Top of the pops?
What makes great rock and roll
Prokofiev, Tcherepnin: The Bark of Yearning (Avi-music)
This is prime Prokofiev
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
The ephemeral Farage
Nigel Farage’s appearance in Parliament was as rare as it was undistinguished
The BBC needs competition
The scandal-ridden Beeb is doomed if it is not held to higher standards
Keir Starmer is causing trouble over the Troubles
The government should stop caving in over Northern Ireland legacy issues
Exile and exaltation
Bohuslav Martinu: The Symphonies (Deutsche Grammophon)
Europe should defend itself
European states should invest more in their own defence, and the US should let them
Joyous genre-bending
Milestones (Signum Classics)
Working with Woods
There have been too few honest explorations into the intrinsic link between woods and humans
Welsh Labour is doomed
New scandals will speed up its decline into irrelevance
Whip smart
Threatening the whipping system would be alarmingly stupid
We have to tame Big Tech
We must act to regulate social media before it does a lot more damage
The regressive feminism of “angry young women”
Gen Z’s radical vanguard have built their worldview on unprogressive foundations