The Critic Magazine

27 March 2025

The April issue of The Critic features a Spring Music Special: Alexandra Wilson sets out a plan to rescue university music departments, Robert Thicknesse admires Handel’s “song-and-dance” contemporaries, Norman Lebrecht doubts arts centres have a future, Paul Lay bemoans Radio 3’s loss of authority, and Haydn Middleton is still crazy after all these years for Paul Simon. Also, John Self admires David Lodge’s highbrow contribution to lowbrow farces, Yuan Yi Zhu enters the “two tier justice” row, John Wilson Foster questions Ireland’s occupation of the moral high ground, Toby Young argues football doesn’t need a regulator, Ellen Pasternack tries to find an affordable London flat-share, and Stephen Bayley is charmed by Sixties Chelsea’s great design survivor, George Ciancimino.