The Critic Magazine

“THAT EXPLAINS THE BARNEY!” EXCLAIMED the taxi driver taking me from Kerry airport to a conference in late April in Killarney, a popular Irish tourist destination. The previous day had been unusually busy because my conference coincided with another,

Stephen Daisley (PART OF THE UNION? MAY) hits the bullseye when he notes that the SNP’s current problems are entirely self-inflicted rather than the work of their visionless political opponents. If readers want an insight into the complete absence of

IN JANUARY, TRUCK DRIVER Fabian Greco pled guilty to assaulting another motorist, dislocating his jaw and leaving him unable to work for weeks. The judge was minded to send him to prison for 18 weeks, but imposed a suspended sentence instead because

“Sayonara!” says Rishi cheerfully, walking into the study. He’s just got back from a big trip to see lots of other leaders in Japan. “That’s a traditional Japanese greeting, apparently. Everywhere I went, people were shouting it to me.” In the corner

MANY PEOPLE DESCRIBE ME AS AN EXTREMIST. And yet all I have ever yearned for is social justice and world peace. I am the very definition of a moderate. This is why I believe that anyone who disagrees with me ought to be publicly executed. Allow me to

That bastion of upright British conservatism, the Daily Telegraph, evidently now believes in the legitimacy of gang warfare. How else to explain its reporting of the trial of Thomas Cashman for the murder of Olivia Pratt-Korbel, a young schoolgirl? T

AS AN UNDERGRADUATE, I TOOK a paper called “British political history, c.300-c.1100”. For ease of communication, we called it the “Anglo-Saxon paper” — which is all it ever was to me, aside from one week when I madly decided to write on the Picts. “W

IN OUTWARD APPEARANCE Professor Jack Tagg looks more like a jazz musician of the 1950s than a retired academic. So uncanny is this resemblance to some gnarled survivor from the age of be-bop that those watching his denimjacketed and peak-capped figur

Reports of the death of the Fifth Republic have been greatly exaggerated. There are no pyramids of moutons morts blocking the Grande Corniche. The gilets jaunes whistle cheerfully as they jet-wash the paving stones of the Promenade des Anglais. And t

IN 2020, JESUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE announced its intention to remove the seventeenth-century marble memorial monument to its benefactor Tobias Rustat (right) from the college chapel where he is buried. Rustat, declared the college, a Stuart courtier d

#ACADEMICTWITTER SHOULD BE a corner of social media where wiser counsels prevail. In reality, it is one of the most vacuous and depressing spaces on the internet. It is a world of preening posers, pseudo-academic humblebrags, never-ending book promot

THERE ARE THREE professions which, historically, have been called vocations. People are “called” to medicine, to the bar, and to the priesthood. This probably reflects the fact that these were, historically, the three professions for which you traine

THE US GOVERNMENT THOUGHT THERE MIGHT be a danger in the Iranian diaspora: communist infiltrators. It was November 1962, a US-backed monarch ran Iran, and Iranian students abroad were organising against him. Working on tips from the Iranian embassy a

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY COMPOSERS about the productions of their colleagues are usually interesting, and often controversial. Benjamin Britten is a case in point: his opinions were nothing if not opinionated. He arbitrarily divided music lovers into t

AS A LITERARY FORM, THE HISTORICAL novel has enjoyed an uncertain reputation in the English-speaking world. The works of Walter Scott — once universally admired, not least by Goethe, Europe’s greatest writer of the age — gather dust, as do most of hi

DEEP IN THE AMAZON JUNGLE, I STUMBLED along a sodden track carved through steamy undergrowth, frequently sinking to my knees in the mud. Leading the way was a bushy-bearded, fiery-eyed Brazilian, Sydney Possuelo, South America’s leading expert on rem

IF THE GHOST OF GEORGE ORWELL is haunting anyone, it’s likely to be D.J. Taylor. In his will, Orwell insisted that no biography should be written after his death. His widow, Sonia Brownell, spent the next few decades fending off would-be biographers,

IN 1700 A MATHEMATICIAN submitted a paper to the Royal Society in which he attempted to calculate, among other things, the rate at which oral testimony — that is, memory — decayed over long periods of time. It’s a quixotic idea, to be sure, but that

WHAT IS HISTORY AND WHAT is it for? The first historians aimed to see that “the deeds of humanity should not be forgotten in time”, as the Greek Herodotus put it, and to provide an account of use to future generations: “a possession for all time” in

IN OUR PRESENT WORLD OF slogans, slurs and sound bites, few names have had more resonance than that of the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek. To those in Britain on the political left, Hayek has become shorthand for the evils of market fundamentalis

WE CAN SPEND ALL OF OUR lives paying for some decisions. In the case of a nation, the process of coming to terms with such decisions and taking responsibility for their consequences is the work of generations, and requires eternal vigilance. This is

THIS MEMOIR BY Emmanuel Carrère, a French master of literary nonfiction, is ostensibly about depression. Five years ago Carrère was desperate enough to have himself committed to an institution and undergo electric shocks. His book tells of his ordeal

IT IS DIFFICULT NOT TO LOVE a book that begins by comparing Ronnie O’Sullivan’s embrace with Judd Trump at the end of the 2022 World Snooker Championship with Bill Murray’s unheard whisper to Scarlett Johansson at the end of Lost in Translation (2003

WHEN I MENTIONED ON Twitter that I was reading Tan Twan Eng’s third novel, writer Richard Osman commented that “The House of Doors is the exact title I’d use if I had to invent an imaginary Booker Prize-winning novel in a book”. Cynicism aside, he’s

ROBBIE MILLEN, literary editor of The Times, could recently be found in the T2 section of that newspaper writing about the latest version of the Granta-sponsored “Best of British Young Novelists” list. For those of you not absolutely up to speed with

● THERE’S A CRUDE DIVIDING LINE that you can run down the middle of rap music. On one side, gangsta rap, which deals with bitches, money and guns. On the other, progressive rap, which puts a political lens on the black American experience. Except, of

● THE ART WORLD, AS WITH ANY other corporate sphere, relies on data. Anecdotal evidence suggests that, post-Covid and the other assorted turmoils of the past couple of years, galleries and auction houses around the world have returned to the status q

● “ANY LAST WORDS?” The question is directed by a Gestapo officer at Aatami Korpi, a Finnish prospector caught by Nazi soldiers as he makes his way across Lapland with a satchel full of gold. First words would have been a start. Clint Eastwood gave u

● SIR TERRY FARRELL IS AN older-generation architect (born 1938) who was brought up on a housing estate on the northern edge of Newcastle (“on the edge of the edge”), passed the eleven-plus to attend the local Roman Catholic Grammar School, St Cuthbe

ONE OF THE MANY thrilling things about being a food history geek is that recipes refresh the parts other scholarship cannot reach. Not only does the archival spadework of historical research — inventories, tax accounts, guild edicts — whizz along muc

“YORK HAM WITH SUSSEX royals.” My suggested menu for the coronation picnic on the village green evoked no enthusiasm. I was against the whole idea — and I don’t just mean the picnic. I still find it odd that a king should wish to condemn himself to a

Editor: Christopher Montgomery Deputy Editor: Graham Stewart Art Director: Martin Colyer Designer: David Rice Production Editor: Nick Pryer Deputy Production Editor: Neil Armstrong Literary Editor: David Butterfield Executive Editor: Sebastian Milban

● “ILLUSIONS," SAID SOMERSET MAUGHAM, “are like umbrellas — you no sooner get them than you lose them, and the loss always leaves a little painful wound.” An umbrella from Swaine Adeney Brigg is no illusion. It is as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. T

I’VE WRITTEN BEFORE ABOUT the existential threat to racing posed by the gambling White Paper and the so-called “affordability checks” pushed by the Gambling Commission. But awful as those may be, they at least have the veneer of being part of a suppo

WE INHERITED A FEW things from my aunt when she died in 2015: a framed sketch of Marianne in her 1970s prime, a seemingly haunted Bose stereo that began playing “So Long, Marianne” by Leonard Cohen when we plugged it in, and two old-fashioned A4 note

TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE SHOCK. No exaggeration. Idly buying probiotics and optimistic collagen pills in Boots, I decided to stand on its special bmi scales — smug in the knowledge I haven’t broken eight stone since overdoing the croissants in Paris on my

IF YOU FIND YOURSELF between Brescia and Rome in mid-June, you may come across a fleet of achingly beautiful classic cars haring along equally beautiful roads. The 1,000-mile MILLE MIGLIA is now a five-day rally more about fun than competition: but b

WHERE WERE YOU ON 5 JUNE 1997? I know where I was: sitting in the Eric Hollies stand at Edgbaston with my granddad as we watched England pulverise Australia. Everyone has their favourite ASHES MEMORY, and this was mine. My nan had recently passed awa