The Critical Commentator

  When I die, please say just that: that I died. Please do not say I have "passed, or "passed away", or "passed on", for if you do I will be very cross and come back to haunt you for such infuriating flabbiness of expression. No, actually, scrub the haunting joke. I won't come back. I'm a hard rationalist, who doesn't believe in ghosts or life after death. The precise problem with our journey towards woolly euphemism in the sphere of death is that sentiment is starting to beat science. And in today's world of untruth, we have never needed the tough clarity  of science more. Death the Comforter William Strang (1859-1921) Photo Credit: University of St Andrews [CC BY-NC]   So please say it like it is. I am allergic to "passed" in any form because it implies the soul undergoing a religious transition. The language of death, highjacked by millennials - and now worse, gen z - is becoming one of enforced timidity: florid and filled with woo-...

  Have you been noticing what I have been noticing recently? An awful lot of striped shirts. No, sorry. I haven't noticed them . A nigh-on ubiquity of loafers. Noticing what someone wears on their feet? Twice as many suits as a couple of years ago. You are very observant and a fine mathematician. Jumpers worn over the shoulders, Euro-style. Really? A whole lot of gold jewellery. Being so unobservant is making me feel pretty useless. Rugby shirts, polo shirts. Ah, that's better. I notice a rugby shirt when I put it on. Plus, most remarkably, plenty of heels, even in daytime. I don't wear heels in the daytime or the evening, I'm afraid.     Remember when we all thought heels were dead. I didn't even notice when they were alive. .. A Bacchante William Etty (1787-1849) Photo Credit: York Museums Trust [CPublic Domain] Introducing the two most potent fashion tribes of the moment, the neo-yuppie and the neo-preppie, as identified by one Sean Monahan. Monahan is an Amer...

 Last week, the US Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested that UFOs are probably demons or "fallen angels" expelled from heaven for their sins. "That," she said "is what makes sense in my world view." Well who can argue with such logic? The Dark Ages, as I am hardly the first to remark, seem to be returning. Occult forces we believed the Age of Reason had banished forever are swarming back  into public life. Last year the popular American broadcaster Tucker Carlson explained that he had been "mauled" by a demon while sleeping. It had "left claw marks on my side." (You don't have to be a sceptic in the league of David Hume to wonder whether the fact that Carlson sleeps with his "four dogs in the bed" is relevant.) A few weeks ago Jordan Peterson's daughter Michaela said her father had been "spiritually attacked" by diabolic forces. And in a recent speech... Peter Thiel set out a series of  p...

  His childhood in Port Talbot, South Wales. "My father had that attitude: stop whining, stop complaining, you don't know what you're talking about, stand up straight, get on with it." I was living in my imagination, my dream world, I suppose. I couldn't understand anything intellectually or academically and that drove me into a kind of  loneliness and resentment. I couldn't fit in. Everything was alien. I didn't want to play with the other kids on the street" Arenig, North Wales James Dickson Innes (1887-1914) Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]  On Lawrence Olivier and theatre "luvvies" . "He [Olivier] gave me this huge break in my life. He seemed to admire my physical strength, because I had that in me, and I had this sense of Welsh danger, you know, quick tempered. I've never felt comfortable with that - the 'kissy-smoochy-darling stuff." Reading his script up to 200 times and the art of acting. "That was my gift, rea...

When the proclaimed  "Word of the Year" is not actually a word and no one knows precisely what it means, it is probably safe to say that we have reached peak cultural absurdity. The website dictionary.com is not exactly the Oxford English Dictionary , but it is a valuable monitor of linguistic trends, and every year it chooses a word that, it says "captures pivotal moments in language and culture." And for 2025, it has selected as its epochal word "67" (pronounced "six-seven"). I know. Me neither. Essentially it's an internet meme that has made it into the Gen Alpha lexicon, and it doesn't strictly matter what it means, or what we - on the outside - think it means. The most popularly accepted definition, given the incantation of "6,7" must be accompanied by having both hands outstretched, in a juggling motion, is that indicates something deemed "so-so" or, in that rather ugly iteration of the age, "meh", or i...

  The hyper-personalised nature of AI chatbots is drawing in teenage boys, who use them for therapy, companionship and relationships, according to new research. A survey of boys in secondary schools by the gender equity organisation Male Allies UK found that just over a third said they were considering the idea of an AI friend, amid growing concern about the rise of AI therapists and girlfriends. Self-Portrait at the Age of 14 Alfred George Stevens (1817-1875) Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND] Lee Chambers, the founder and chief executive of  Male Allies UK, said: "We've got a situation where lots of parents still think that teenagers are just using AI to cheat on their homework. "Young people are using it a lot more like an assistant in their pocket, a therapist when they are struggling, a companion when they want to be validated, and even sometimes in a romantic way. It's that personalisation aspect - they're saying 'it understands me, my parents don't....