Soviet Union
Fanfares for the common man
Communist composers tried to create ideologically pure works for the workers — but without any great degree of success
A chronicle of gratitude and ambivalence
Mieczyslaw Weinberg: 12th symphony/Dawn (Chandos)
Between two superpowers
Rail in the development of the USA and the Soviet Union
Gender ketman
Masking doubts to avoid dissent
The country that went to the wall
From its birth after 1945, to its death after 1990
Unveiled enigmas
Shostakovich: Works unveiled (BIS)
The destiny of cult thinking
Dark similarities with the Soviet moral void are already on the rise
No time for EU-bashing
Let’s focus on Putin, not Brussels
A Vilnius descent
Progress only goes so far
What can Russia’s failure in Afghanistan teach us about its war in Ukraine?
The echoes should be ominous for the Kremlin
Most Read
The martyrdom of Young Bob
On ebbing power of the political influencer
Grooming gangs and the truth
We should not give ammunition to deniers of the grooming gangs scandal
Why has Keir Starmer been so unpopular?
He was the perfect embodiment of a failing system
Babies need women
Leaving children with only men who are not their parents is foolish and dangerous
Stop ignoring the Islamisation of our democracy
The British state is bending to Islamism, not attempting to defeat it
Time for change?
A new book might overstate the durability of Trumpian politics
The revolt against the public
The establishment cannot accept ordinary citizens having power
Eulogy for rural life
A growing sense of gloom pervades Starmer’s Britain
The soul of Putin
Twenty-five years after George W. Bush first looked into Vladimir Putin’s eyes, the Russian president has changed less than America would like to believe
Why people smuggling means profits
People smuggling is one of the few functioning markets left in the UK
Stop selling sexism
Banning strip clubs might sound unrealistic but it is the right thing to do
The Boston barbarians
The Boston Symphony acted like a New Orleans nightclub owner with a recalcitrant pole-dancer
What does it mean to be free?
Women are caught between different experiences of freedom and loss
Working with Woods
There have been too few honest explorations into the intrinsic link between woods and humans
The sleep of reason
Sir Mark Rowley’s forgotten police thriller reveals the assumptions, anxieties and moral universe of Britain’s managerial elite.
Britain needs a moral core
The UK’s greatest vulnerability isn’t its weakened military but its lack of spiritual depth