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 June issue of The Critic examines what is going wrong in the Church of England — which, lacking an Archbishop of Canterbury, seems set to be leaderless for most of this year. A Critic in-depth special report reveals that the Church Commissioners’ commitment of a £100 million fund to atone for an investment 300 years ago in slave trading transpires to be based on a misunderstanding — the investment was actually in government debt.

Also, Ben Sixsmith takes Douglas Murray to task, Jonathan Ford explains how the British government will struggle to save steelmaking, John McGuirk bemoans the lack of a talented, professional class in conservative movements, Patrick Porter thinks British defence policy is unrealistic, Terence Kealey argues that universities have been ruined by the non-academics who really run them, Rufus Bird asks if the art world is still interested in the opinions of connoisseurs and Patrick Kidd investigates why so few French tennis players win the French Open.