Music
How I discovered classical music
Daniel Johnson describes the joy of indulging in music as a teenage boy
An essential record
Norman Lebrecht reviews Shostakovich: Violin concertos 1&2, performed by Alina Ibragimova and the State Symphony Orchestra of Russia
The sadder side of summer
Tragedy struck Gustav Mahler, the archetypal summer composer, in 1907
Days in the life of the Fab Four
Joseph Connolly reviews One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time, by Craig Brown
Sing it again, Frank
Michael Henderson listens once more to the Great American Songbook, most enriching of entertainments
Yardbird: 100 Years of Charlie Parker
Dominic Green looks at the immortality of jazz saxophonist, Charlie Parker
The welcome sound of silence
For three days I listened to nothing but birdsong, marvelling at the variety and the volume
Havana heartbeat
How a stiff, gangly, middle-aged Englishman fell for the seductive rhythms of Cuba
Welcome to the unfrozen North
How Canada reinvented its musical prowess
Clementi House
From music to medicine: the secrets of a Kensington home
It’s not rocket science
It all goes wrong when arts departments start imitating research universities
Why we should question the charge of “Islamophobia”
Valid criticism of beliefs and behaviour should not be equated with hateful bigotry
Police Scotland must stop patronising the public
The Hate Crime And Public Order Act will waste the time of the police and endanger the freedoms of the public
No joke
Scotland’s Hate Crime Act is absurd, but nobody’s laughing
The secrets of familial suffering
Recovering from the burden of generational pain can be a private act
In defence of British theological education
Critics should be more optimistic about the new generation of ordinands
Faustian modernity
200 years ago, Goethe invented modern man
Big beasts versus the Bible
Darwin sidelined the Creator by documenting the slow mechanisms of evolution
The gambling suicides myth
The rate of deaths caused by gambling has been foolishly exaggerated
Britain is still safe for Jews
It may be far from perfect — but where would be safer?
Judith Butler has a projection problem
It is she, not gender-critical feminists, who seems to be afraid
