Music
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
Irritatingly glib take on a golden year
Stanfield adds little to the history of rock that hasn’t been said better elsewhere
John Adams: Slonimsky’s Earbox (Alpha)
Among his best work
John Cage: Four Walls (Fuga Libera)
More than a little bit mad
Debunking the decline deniers
Armed police at Christmas markets are a bad sign however you look at it
The case for Badenoch
She has a chance to capitalise on Starmer’s weakness
Two cheers for pedestrianisation
Pedestrianisation cannot solve all of Oxford Street’s problems
BoJo’s Life of Johnson
Exclusive extracts of perhaps the best autobiography by a former Conservative prime minister called Boris
Cities of the mind
19th century English towns live on in our collective imagination
Israel, the ICJ and the plausibility of genocide
Commentators are misunderstanding the provisional measures of the International Court of Justice
The first female President will be Republican
American conservatives are far less averse to assertive women than the political left
Why I, as a mother…
Being a mother can change our perspectives and priorities
Anti-industrial strategy
Manufacturing has been systematically devastated by successive governments
A matter of life and death
It is not the job of judges to tell someone that they are wrong for believing in life
A nuclear nothing?
Is Russia’s new nuclear doctrine hot air, or an explosive new factor in world affairs?
