The Critic is Britain’s new monthly magazine for politics, ideas, art, literature and much more. Co-edited by Michael Mosbacher and Christopher Montgomery, The Critic exists to push back against a self-regarding and dangerous consensus that finds critical voices troubling, triggering, insensitive and disrespectful. The point is not provocation or trolling. The point of honest criticism is to better approach truth, not deny its possibility.

Ossified thought and a lack of intellectual rigour are depressing features of all sides of today’s political and cultural debate. Our writers will subscribe to no editorial line nor serve the interests of any party, faction or cause. We ask them to write because we expect them to be honest, and lucidly so. Look to our contributors and fault us if they are not. 

Contributors to the magazine include Jonathan Meades, Douglas Murray, Nick Cohen, Joshua Rozenberg, Anne McElvoy, Norman Lebrecht, Daniel Johnson, Lisa Hilton, Hannah Betts and Artists in Residence Adam Dant and Miriam Elia.

In the March issue of The Critic, David Spencer uncovers the real story behind why the Metropolitan Police hired to its ranks recruits who had failed vetting checks and went on to commit serious crimes, including Cliff Mitchell, who was subsequently convicted of 13 counts of rape.

Tim Congdon warns that indebted universities risk being asset-stripped with consequences for their charitable status, Julie Bindel goes to Mexico to investigate a booming “baby business” brokered by a British surrogacy agency, Iason Athanasiadis files his dispatch from the partly ruined, partly thriving city of Damascus as it shakes off the dust of Syria’s civil war and Stephen Bayley finds reasons to be cheerful in Elephant and Castle.

Also, the late Scottish man of letters, Allan Massie, is profiled, Jonathan Glancey admires the lost beauty of railway art, Stephen Pollard offers racing tips for Cheltenham, and Henry Jeffreys uncorks the latest Critic Wine Club offer.