The Critic Magazine

27 October 2022

The November issue of The Critic magazine weighs a political generation in the balance and provides its sharp takes and long views on the world of current affairs, ideas, society, culture and the arts. Derek Offord explains the political thinking and strategic calculations that drove Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine; John Self argues Kurt Vonnegut is celebrated for the wrong novel, and William Cook goes to Antwerp and wonders why the British have never taken to Rubens. In an astonishing feature, Paul Raffaele travels to West Africa, where he meets slave owners of the Sahara, and some of their “property” who are born into a bondage they can never escape whilst the rest of the world looks away. A quarter of a century after the Sensation exhibition made them famous, Michael Prodger charts the contrasting fortunes of the Young British Artists whilst Lisa Hilton finds out whether turning The Ivy into a national restaurant chain has bottled or spat out the essence of what made the West End institution legendary. Robert Thicknesse has the hots for Tosca, Sarah Ditum gets to grips with the meaning of M People, and Norman Lebrecht goes in search of Mahler.