The Critic Magazine

MARGARET THATCHER AS PRIME Minister was to her enemies, then and since, a tyrant. But one whose faults, however legion, never included weakness. She was in control. However, whatever the public’s perception, she was anything but dominant. Endlessly s

ON 14 OCTOBER, THE AUSTRALIAN people will vote in a referendum that, if successful, will radically alter the governance of Australia forever. The amendment being put by the Labor government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese seeks to enshrine an Abor

AN UNACCUSTOMED FEELING took hold among attendees at the Conservative Party of Canada’s annual convention in Quebec City in September. For years, they had felt the impoverishment — economic, but also cultural and spiritual — of their country under Ju

I HAVE MANY MEMORIES FROM THE LABOUR PARTY conferences I attended some three decades ago. Certainly, when you walk in on Tony Benn in his pyjamas you never forget it (we’ll come to that in a minute). As a researcher at the Labour-supporting Fabian So

LAST MONTH, THE ECONOMIST TYLER COWEN interviewed the writer and investor Paul Graham on his podcast. There he asked one of those classic interview questions: if you had a time machine, where would you go? Graham confessed that he struggled to resist

TO SAY THAT THE BRITISH AND THE IRISH HAVE A LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP would be an understatement. Neither side can bring themselves to end a feud that has long since lost its raison d’être. Instead, we continue to snipe, to provoke, to begrudge and be

MAIREAD MCSWEENEY — her website supplies instructions on how to pronounce her forename — first turned up in the books pages a decade-and-a-half ago with a novel called The Galway Girl. Described by the Observer as “an eye-popping ping dissection of a

IN VILLA EZZAHRA, A SERENE HIDEAWAY on the outskirts of Marrakesh, one of Northern Ireland’s finest artists, Colin Watson, is trying to teach me the rudiments of figurative painting. He’s a super teacher, patient and perceptive, but it’s no easy task

SIMON HEFFER’S GREAT VIRTUE as an historian is that he attends to the voices we should not necessarily expect. A good example is found in his coverage of the Munich crisis, when the British were contemplating what Neville Chamberlain and the diplomat

THE READING LIST I GIVE MY first-year students of nineteenth-century European history is headed by a reproduction of a painting. Execution of Torrijos and his Companions on the Beach at Malaga, was painted in 1888 by the Spaniard Antonio Gisbert Pér

ON 18 DECEMBER 69, THE EMPEROR Vitellius, who briefly grabbed the supreme power in the civil war that followed the suicide of Nero, realised that his time was up. The army was abandoning him and the troops of a new pretender were closing in on Rome.

‘‘FOR MANY RUSSIANS,” writes McGlynn, “the road to shooting civilians in Bucha was paved with battle re-enactments and military dress-up.” In Putin’s Russia, warped memory has substituted Soviet ideology while cultural consciousness has replaced clas

WRITING INTELLIGENCE HISTORY is problematic. The difficulties it presents are essentially twofold. First there is the issue of archives and records. As Calder Walton himself points out, there is today such a huge amount now available that to research

A FEW YEARS AGO I WENT TO VISIT the then-nascent wine estate of Rathfinny, nestled above Cuckmere Haven between the South Downs and the English Channel. I was impressed by the scale and the ambition: vines marched far and wide over the rolling hills

NEWS THAT THE THOROUGHLY delightful Ms Sutton has been made head of RSC casting at Stratford boosts morale no end! Having proudly counted myself among young Charlotte’s most fervent supporters these past years (one may have even offered some discreet

The start of the new opera season this year replicates one of those post-apocalyptic movies with rag-clad wretches staggering from their caves to check out the smoking wasteland outside. Of course, this is also literally true of everything in the cou

IT’S BEEN A SLOW START to the theatre new term: summer runs are being prolonged to save money and new options have been two-star meagre. That has however highlighted the few serious West End productions which have proved durable enough to run into th

REGULAR READERS OF THIS column have doubtless noticed there’s nothing I like more than a conspiracy thriller. So when Walter Presents, Channel 4’s sub-channel for foreign crime and drama, highlighted the Finnish series Enemy of the People, I immediat

MY SON TELLS ME the truth about salad. He orders it in restaurants, where I scorn it as a poor test of cuisine. He eats it in French and Italian houses, where I am a rare guest. So, when he criticises my habit of sloshing vast amounts of dressing ove

2023. EVERY CALENDAR NOW gives us this number. Few would think twice about what it means, but a sorry — and stupid — situation has emerged. It is now frowned upon, in the great majority of our educational and political institutions to give this year

I PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE FORGIVEN my daughter by now for making me miss one of the closest Ryder Cups. It was 13 years ago and she wasn’t born when I turned down the offer to cover it because my first child was due and it would have been tricky if my w

“WITH VAR,” THE PRESIDENT OF Spanish referees once asked, “what are we going to talk about after the game?” The comment was a flippant joke, but it belied a widely-held assumption about using technology to verify or overturn referees’ decisions in fo

FOOTBALL TRANSFERS ARE about numbers. There are the EuroMillions-level headline fees and the eye-watering weekly salaries, both reflecting the insanely overheated yet entirely logical market of the one true global sport’s ruthless meritocracy. Call m