The Critic

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.

The Christmas double issue of The Critic magazine is ready to unwrap, with 112 pages of features, reviews, table talk, analysis, comment and cartoons spanning the cultural, literary, and political landscape at home and abroad. 

In the issue, Helen Joyce is happy among her heretics, Norman Lebrecht looks forward to a year of Anton Bruckner, Felipe Fernández-Armesto cooks the festive treats that are better on Christmas Eve, wine critic Henry Jeffreys mixes his grapes, and Robert Hutton finds that Ridley Scott’s lavish biopic sells Napoleon short.

Also, Johnny Leavesley and the architect Robert Adam uncover the planning rules that have brought Britain to a stop, Laurent Lemasson enters Michel Houellebecq’s world of threesomes and literary philosophy, Hakan Boström reports from Sweden, which is hit by over eighty bomb attacks a year. David Elstein discovers epic mythmaking in recent histories of the Mau Mau rebellion, Michael Prodger finds museums are being emptied by their custodians as well as thieves, and Hannah Betts goes casually glam for the festive season.