An autumn note
“For many, the end of this uneasy year cannot come quickly enough”
Politics, Ideas and the Arts
An ordinary killing
Ian Cobain’s book uses the killing of Millar McAllister to paint a meticulous portrait of the Troubles
Greater—not wiser
John Mullan elucidates the genius of Charles Dickens
Elizabethans transformed
There is little about our current dilemmas that our parents and grandparents have not already confronted and survived
Revisiting Nazi myths
Products of paranoid imaginations, less closely linked than might appear
The invention of Stoppard
“It appears to have been a sense that it was all becoming too easy that prompted Tom Stoppard to resolve, on his 23rd birthday, to give up journalism and write a play”
Letters: Parents first, Ancient and modern, Seeing red
Angela Ritch laments the failures of today’s parents (Education, July): they are “ill-equipped to prepare their children” for today’s education; their “engagement and responsibility . . . cannot be taken for granted.”
Sex matters
“It’s been quite the month for the Gender Critical community”
Remote working will exacerbate inequality
‘Cultural capital provides a gloss and a shield of confidence to those gifted with it. As home working becomes a permanent feature of the workplace, the opportunities for working class and ethnically
There have always been “woke” students—the problem is their elders
‘The people running these institutions—they’re the people who are actually cancelling the songs, renaming the buildings and withdrawing the paintings’
Don’t dismiss incels
The “incel” subjects of TFW No GF are not actually especially unattractive or unintelligent—what they lack above all is charm and an ability to motivate themselves”
A knife-fight in a phone booth
In August the Department of Education announced that GCSE students would be allowed to drop poetry as a subject in their 2021 exams, prompting protests by what the Daily Mail called “celebrity