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.

Latest issue

The Critic’s March issue — 112 pages of challenging ideas, thoughtful reflections and entertaining diversions for open-minded readers:

Alasdair Palmer on why lockdowns don’t work; Edward Skidelsky on the rise of new totalitarians of both the left and the right; A. W. F. Edwards on Gonville & Caius cancelling its heritage; Clive Aslet on the Barclay brothers’ Xanadu; Charles Saumarez Smith on Burlington House and its rents; Edward Lucas on London’s unique and threatened India Club; and David Starkey on what has gone wrong with the National Trust.

In the United States, Oliver Wiseman goes in search of UFOs, Daniel Johnson charts the decay of American conservatism and Frederic Raphael extols his wronged friend Joseph Epstein. In Europe, Nigel Jones drops acid with Ernst Junger and Douglas Murray comes on board as a Critic regular and explores the Richard Strauss-Stefan Zweig relationship.

Also, James Kirchick on the glamour boys; Janine di Giovanni on Quo Vadis, Aida?; Anne McElvoy on radio drama; John Self on writers’ hunger for money; and our Secret Author on the LRB.

Plus our Table Talk regulars — including Hannah Betts, Lisa Hilton, Hephzibah Anderson, Felipe Fernandez Armesto and Nick Cohen - pursue their pastimes and pleasure. Adam Dant pictures London’s paradise of sleaze. John Springs paints forty years of US Presidents, and Laura Dodsworth & Nina Murden create faith masks fitting for our times.