Year in Review
Heroes, villains and lessons in life
Intellectual history, sneered at in Oxford 40 years ago, is all the rage there now
Libyans, Parisians and London Irish
Dry-ish, spare, clear-eyed — rare in a world of literary bloat, sentiment and overstatement
The Critic books of the year
Reading highlights from our editors and contributors
The greatest shitshow on Earth
Hopes and fears at the end of 2022
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
The asylum seeker will see you now
We should not legitimise illegal migration and its damaging effects
American strategy in Iran is wiser than it seems
President Trump’s intervention will leave the world safer than it was
The ends of Pan-Africanism
An exhibition devoted to Pan-Africanism avoids important political and aesthetic questions
From triple lock to price caps
Opinium polling for The Critic reveals the totemic pension policy has entrenched a politics that demands control over growth
A failed war on fags
The black market has taken over the tobacco trade Down Under
A crippling consensus
Labour, the Greens and the Lib Dems are singing from the same destructive hymn sheet
The online life that steals your soul
Read this book and then stamp on your phone
Dignified design for the people
A book that asks all the right questions but hasn’t thought through all the answers
The ballad of Robbie and Harry
Sometimes, the struggle can become the art
Labour’s toxic medicine
The more they treat the symptoms of decline, the worse things get
The Real shooting match
Cue the bogus platitudes that leaders make about sport’s ability to heal divisions