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 brightens the festive season with 112 pages of ideas and debate, cultural coverage, political insight, reportage, and investigative journalism. In a major exposé, the veteran Panorama reporter, Tom Mangold, reveals what really happened when the BBC tried to cover up how Martin Bashir was allowed to use forgery and deception to mislead Princess Diana into giving him her famous 1995 interview and how the Corporation smeared the whistle-blowers. Former Cabinet minister, Simon Clarke, gives an insider view on how it went wrong for Liz Truss and what he thinks she got right, whilst Jon Moynihan explains the motivations behind the Bank of England’s role in a turbulent period in British politics. Alix Kroeger reports from Odesa where Ukrainians are coming to terms with their city’s complicated heritage as well as fearing for its future. From Amsterdam, Diederik Boomsma weighs the price of art and recounts how he found himself at the centre of a national furore for daring to suggest that the struggling arts sector could be funded by selling a Roy Lichtenstein painting in the city’s possession. Henry Jeffreys navigates Christmas’s port-rich diet, Patrick Galbraith shoots geese, Boris Starling salutes sport’s unsung heroes and The Critic’s artist-in-residence, Adam Dant, commemorates 900 years of Bart’s hospital. All this and so much more makes The Critic the ideal Christmas companion.