The Critic

The Critic is Britain's new highbrow monthly current affairs magazine for politics, art and literature. Dedicated to rigorous content, first rate writing and unafraid to ask the questions others won't.

Law without boundaries

The Critic

Letters • Write to The Critic by email at letters@thecritic.co.uk including your address and telephone number

In defence of Lord Hermer • Some of the criticism of the former Attorney General following his response to a rape trial has been unfounded

Woman About Town

PESTON’S INBOX

Time for another tax revolt? • Business faces a punitive autumn Budget. We must get organised without delay

REFORM UK’S CRUEL SUMMER • The whiff of financial scandal has seriously dented the party’s support. But we should not mistake Reform’s weakness for the other parties’ strength

Indy Bhattacharyya goes in search of Roger Hallam, the charismatic svengali behind environmental protest movements such as Just Stop Oil

EVERYDAY LIES WITH THEODORE DALRYMPLE

The French radical who mocked Mao • In the midst of France’s intense Maomania, as intellectuals feted the Chinese dictator, one man dared to think differently

Here’s what should happen at the Jason Arday inquiry

HOW TO FIX OUR BROKEN ASYLUM SYSTEM • Britain can’t keep taking in the world’s disposessed, thanks to an asylum system that is an unsustainable mess that risks undermining social cohesion and trust in democracy. Radical action is needed — whether alone or in concert with our European allies

THE BIG LIES TOLD ABOUT ISRAEL • The country is often painted as an irredeemably racist, apartheid state which oppresses Arabs and has has committed “genocide” in Gaza. But is this really true?

Myths about Marxism debunked

The pile-on paradox • Free speech is vital to the survival of a healthy society, but it should be used wisely

The evangelist who would ban gay marriage • Julie Bindel meets a popular Christian campaigner who critics underestimate at their peril

More houses means more babies • Stopping women working won’t boost birth rates, no matter what right-wing bloggers say

GREEN’S AMERICA • It has been assumed that Vice President J.D. Vance is next in line but he’s not a shoo-in and recent missteps will haunt him

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ALL THE HEROES? • Sebastian Milbank considers the disapparance of the great men and women who shaped history

The Critic Profile Anita Brookner • The austere laureate of love and regret often maligned as a mimsy writer of books about lonely women

Simon Wittering Fantasy Diarist

THE SECRET WAR OF OUR MAN IN BUDAPEST • Wartime archives reveal that the Hungarian capital was the Casablanca of the Balkans, a seething hotbed of spies, sabotage, people-smuggling and propaganda. Now we can reveal …

Still a Gulf between us • Pierre d’Alancaisez asks why, despite the fact that the typical art world intellectual couldn’t find the Middle East on a map, art connected to the region is currently all the rage. Does this mean Islamic cultures are going to be as interested in Western contemporary art?

Adam Dant on…

STUDIO ANNA TIHANYI

A monument to Victorian ingenuity

A Peruvian puzzle

Read it and weep

The nib of the matter

Condemning Titian as a pornographer

Book of judges

The German question

Back to our roots

Life on the stately home front

The AI utopian

A travel novelist’s passage to Egypt

What can possibly go wrong? • Signed a book deal? Then read this cautionary fable about the modern publishing industry

Romeo Coates “Between you and me …”

Norman Lebrecht on Music • Hear Mahler in the wild — and...