Pet Shop Boys
Words and music
The bookish thrill of recognising the literary references of the pop artists you love
Calculated absurdity
I want to listen to music that sounds like the dumb hopefulness of being young that I once couldn’t wait to rid myself of, says Sarah Ditum
Procedural Man
The Process is good, the Process is correct, no matter what, trust the Process
How H&W hit the iceberg
The opportunism and ineptitude that brought Belfast’s shipbuilding industry to its knees
British libel laws are a SLAPP in the face to press freedom
We need major liberalisation of libel law
A tumultuous decade of ingenious novelties
Did the English Revolution go full circle, replacing one overmighty king with another?
Italy is right to extend its ban on surrogacy
It is good for women and it is good for children
The danger of naive humanitarianism
The rejection of force is complacent and unsustainable
Not a dull phrase
Ethel Smyth: 2nd sonata &c (Delphian)
David Lammy’s Caucasus catastrophe
The Foreign Secretary’s blunder has exposed the hollowness of “progressive realism”
Worthy instrument
York Bowen, Willam Walton: Viola concertos (SWR Music)
Britain should get serious about organised crime
We underestimate how much crime is the work of small, nasty groups of people
The death of an Anglo-Hungarian Painting
Nine months after a savage act of vandalism at Trinity College Cambridge, anger is growing at its lacklustre response