COLUMNS

Letters 8

Helen Joyce

Hard lessons in life 6

Yuan Yi Zhu: Posthumous courting 9

Woman about Town

Sarah Ditum: Tra˜c hazards 10 Dilyn the Dog

Bozza beats his chest 11 Asa Bennett

°e Tories’ phony peace 12

Serious business Ned: Pity our impoverished CEOs 17

My Woke World

Titania McGrath: Speaking English is colonial terrorism 19

Arty Types

D.J. Taylor on Jayne Payne 29

Everyday Lies ˜eodore Dalrymple: °e TV boss who decides what you watch 35

Sounding Board

Marcus Walker: Treasure-houses of the nation 39

Economics

Tim Congdon: Don’t chuck money at foreign companies 48

Romeo Coates °e madding crowd 76

Adam Dant on … London’s water 52

Sarah Gabriel: Masquerade: ˜e Lives of Noël Coward by Oliver Soden 58

SPRING MUSIC SPECIAL

Modernists can be monarchists

Richard Bratby says radical composers are not out to smash the system 20

Betjeman the beat poet

Robert °icknesse recalls a thrilling collaboration between the poet and a group of oddball musicians 23

The quietest guest of all

Mahan Esfahani says the clavichord makes up for a lack of grandeur with extraordinary expressiveness 25

Words and music

John Self enjoys the bookish thrill of recognising the literary references of the pop artists he loves 27

FEATURES

Radical chic charities

Poppy Coburn on the madness of giving activist charities public money to oppose government policy 13

A classic case of missing the point

Anonymous attacks a misguided campaign to decolonise the Univerity of London’s Classics curriculum 18

Canada’s grave errors

Jonathan Kay on the delusions gripping a once-sane country 30

Don’t make Iran the new Ukraine

Matthew Petti warns that American hawks are pushing for war with Iran 33

The poor relation of the art world

William Cook says traditional ÿgurative painting is marginalised by galleries in favour of modernist artworks 36

Keeping it in the family

Mahan Esfahani: Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World by Leah Broad 60

Michael Henderson: Enough: Scenes from Childhood by Stephen Hough 62

Jo Bartosch: Hags: ˜e Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women by Victoria Smith; Feminism Against Progress by Mary Harrington 63

Paul Sagar: A Terribly Serious Adventure: Philosophy at Oxford 1900-60 by Nikhil Krishnan 65

C.C.

Corn: Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire by Nandini Das 66

Victor Sebestyen: Revolutionary Spring: Fighting for a New World 1848-1849 by Christopher Clark 68

Adrian Tinniswood: Georgian Arcadia: Architecture for the Park and Garden by Roger White 70

David Wootton: Ignorance: A Global History by Peter Burke 71

John Self: Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks; Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery; ˜ e Sky is Falling by Lorenza Mazzetti 73

THE SECRET AUTHOR

Show me the money 75

Contents