Reviews
World-class snob, first-class diarist
Andrew Roberts says that in these diaries, Channon takes snobbery to a truly pathological level
Rehabilitation of a great stylist
Christopher Bray thinks Roth’s “novelist’s autobiography” is one of his most fizzing examinations of the stories that construct our various selves
Ravel, Dutilleux, Debussy: Quart de nuit (Deux-Elles)
Norman Lebrecht is left wanting more Dutilleux
An essential record
Norman Lebrecht reviews Shostakovich: Violin concertos 1&2, performed by Alina Ibragimova and the State Symphony Orchestra of Russia
To the streets, via the Crush Bar
Robert Thicknesse on Opera
Rave that runs out of puff
Summertime and the streaming is easy, but Netflix’s White Lines leaves Adam LeBor cold
Masterful tombstone for a tudor bruiser
Hannah Betts reviews The Mirror & The Light by Hilary Mantel
A puritan but not a fanatic
Simon Heffer reviews Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of Cromwell’s Protectorate by Paul Lay
The poet and the patrician
Stephen Parkinson reviews The Fire is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F Buckley Jr, and the debate over race in America, by Nicholas Buccola
War-war not jaw-jaw
Robert Hutton reviews Our Man in New York by Henry Hemming
Is the culture war over?
Populist political victories do nothing to change the reality of progressive institutional dominance
The failure of the Irish nerve
Politicians are not acting and the public are not forcing them to act
The authoritarian populism of Keir Starmer
This government is anything but technocratic
The French far right are losers
Will Rassemblement National will ever be the ruling party?
There’s no good way to equal pay
You can’t beat the laws of supply and demand
Sophocles’s lack-of-foresight saga
Families will feud, from the BC era to 2024
Cowboy quartet
A new screen Western is always welcome
The Warburg refurbished
The institute used to feel intellectually introverted
Who Should Be The Next Archbishop of Canterbury?
With the shock resignation of Justin Welby, who will the Great British Public select to lead the Church of England?
Let’s leave the Commonwealth
There is no point in being a member just to be browbeaten about our past
Why is the BBC so obsessed with drag?
Incessant coverage of drag shows and drag queens has become something of a running joke
