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 May issue of The Critic asks whether the future of British conservatism rests not with Kemi Badenoch nor Nigel Farage but Robert Jenrick, Patrick Porter assesses the risks and limits of a British military presence in Ukraine, Daniel DePetris unpicks President Trump’s tactics towards Iran, Jo Bartosch talks to Reem Alsalem the UN’s “sex realist” rapporteur on violence against women, and Barry Norris goes on a road trip through Javier Milei’s Argentina. Max Bayliss finds reasons to be cheerful in England’s remaining monasteries, and Jacob Phillips enjoys suburban solace at a Hare Krishna mock Tudor mansion, but Patrick Kidd is less happy that even affluent Blackheath is becoming a retail wasteland. New theatre critic Alexander Larman reviews Manhunt, Adam LeBor salutes Netflix’s The Leopard, stylist Hannah Betts looks good in polka dots, Norman Lebrecht loses hope for Russian classical composition under Putin, and Boris Starling bids farewell to Everton’s Goodison Road.