Non-Fiction
Strongholds and strong women
Three non-fiction works beat out the general mediocrity of 2022
Walking the path of the stupidly rich
Serious Money tracks the excesses and indulgences of those with wealth to burn
The Critic Books Podcast: Portable Magic
Lucasta Miller discusses Emma Smith’s new book
Fishing with Ted Hughes
A new memoir finds the poet in a world of rivers, rods, and reels
Narcisssism and the naked arts graduate
This call for an overhaul of the sex industry is self-indulgent and short-sighted
Seductive, scholarly life of the poet-priest
This new biography of John Donne brings the centuries-dead poet to life
Writing outside the box
Elena Ferrante’s essay collection is an exploration of the delights and constraints of form
When bad reviews attack
Book reviews are not the preserve of the literary dilettantes — they have real power
The Nineties: smells like Gen X nostalgia
Chuck Klosterman’s book sheds rose-tinted light on the decade
The Critic Books Podcast: Bacon in Moscow
What was it like to take Francis Bacon to the USSR?
Choosing enemies wisely
China manifestly wishes to avenge her past humiliation at Western hands
Can we save our parish churches?
It will take cultural as well as institutional change
Britain should get serious about organised crime
We underestimate how much crime is the work of small, nasty groups of people
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the forgetting of feminist principles
Single-sex toilets are essential if we are going to respect women’s personal space
The fading fumes of the New Right
None of the Tory candidates offer the chance of an ideological makeover
Less than the sum of its parts
Eugene Onegin, Royal Opera
The big picture
A story of modern Britain, a moral tale, of venality, hubris and fraud
The end of art critics
The critics who are now lackeys of the art world
A matter of life and death
It is not the job of judges to tell someone that they are wrong for believing in life
Must-Miss TV
Your regular Critic round-up of the hottest shows and films.
A festival of losing
Will the Republic of Ireland ever face up to its problems?
