The Critical Commentator

  Fasting? Hv gvn p vwls fr Lnt. Landowners Landscape,  James Torrance (1859-1916)  Photo Credit: Russel-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum [CC BY-NC-ND] Half of England is owned by less than 1% of its population, according to new data shared with the Guardian that seeks to penetrate the secrecy surrounding land ownership. The findings, described as “astonishingly unequal” mean about 25,000 landowners – typically members of the aristocracy and corporations – have control of half the country. Major owners include the Duke of Buccleuch, the Queen, several grouse moor estates and the entrepreneur James Dyson. Jon Trickett, a Labour MP and shadow minister for the Cabinet Office, hailed the findings and called for a full debate on the issue, adding: “The dramatic concentration of land ownership is an inescapable reminder that ours is a country for the few and not the many. It’s simply not right that aristocrats, whose families have owned the same areas of land for centuries, and large corporati

  Cultural Appropriation Othello and Desdemona ,  William Powell Frith (1819-1909) Photo Credit: The Fitzwilliam Museum [CC BY-NC-ND] An actor’s   automatic license to fake an accent is now increasingly in doubt. Casting agents are under growing pressure to find talent that matches the background of a character if they want to avoid accusations of cultural appropriation, or even, in some cases the charge of outright mockery. “I feel the days when English-speaking actors put on accents and told the world they were Russian or German or Swedish or Italian – those days are gone,” Ralph Fiennes (pictured) said, explaining why he had largely cast Russian actors in  The White Crow . “One has read quite a lot of critical responses to films that are still doing that. The landscape has shifted.” Fiennes defensive position follows fresh demands for greater authenticity on screen. Whether driven by a wish to create more work for disabled actors, ethnic minorities and transgender performers, or per

  Questioning                               With a little girl’s help Adrian Chiles puts forward the notion that we’ve lost the art of curiosity and we need it back. Socrates (d 399 BC) ,   D. Brucciani & Co. Photo Credit: Moray Council Museums Service [CC BY-NC] …It’s not what you know; it’s what you want to know. On all media, no one seems to have the curiosity of that little girl. Nobody wants to know stuff; they just want to tell you what they already know, or how wrong you are about what you think you know. When is the last time you heard anyone on a phone-in ask a question along the lines of: “There’s something I don’t quite get; please can you explain…?”                                          A doctor of my acquaintance invariably ends her consultations by asking the patient if they have any questions. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. A specialist in the field of health literacy sat in on one of her clinics recently. “Do me a favour,” she said. “Instead of asking i

 In the past year British newspapers have reported on the mental health benefits of activities including but not limited to: having a dog, having a cat, having houseplants, keeping chickens, keeping bees, keeping a sourdough yeast going, digging flowerbeds, mowing the lawn, tending an allotment, watching birds, looking at trees, walking, jogging, swimming, horse riding, yoga, cold showers, hot saunas, afternoon naps, knitting, painting, cooking, baking, decluttering and just quietly pottering about the place. They missed some of my favourites: sharpening pencils,ironing handkerchiefs into triangles and sweating an onion to the Six O'Clock News . If these seem basic or trivial endeavours, I mention them only to illustrate how any pursuit, however minor, can be corralled into the campaign to improve our collective mental health... Patients waiting to see the Doctor with Figures Representing  Their Fears Rosemary Carson (b. 1962) Photo Credit: Wellcome Collection [CC BY] I worry, thou

... For thousands of people, (Princess) Diana was an icon. More than that, her death was the point at which it became clear that British society had fundamentally changed. To some of us, it was as if we suddenly found ourselves inhabiting a different country. Thousands of people were behaving as if they personally had been bereaved. Wan and tearful Tube passengers clutched Cellophane-wrapped bouquets on their way to add to the drifts of flowers and cards piling up at the gates of Kensington Palace. Ophelia John Everett Millais (1829-1896) Photo Credit: Tate Britain [CC BY-NC-ND] Yet all those thousands were mourning someone they had never met... By declaring themselves to be grieving, these "mourners" devalued the real grief felt over the loss of those who are truly close to us... If people were not now wearing on their sleeves emotions such as grief or love, they risked being attacked as unfeeling. Yet no one knew what Prince Charles or the Queen actually felt, any more than

One of America's greatest composers has warned against "tearing the house down" and urged would-be reformers of the musical cannon to accept that figures like Richard Wagner could be objectionable. Steve Reich said that while an expansion of the canon should continue the "cancellation" of artists would "not help anyone". Tristan and Isolde John Duncan (1866-1945) Photo Credit: Museums & Galleries Edinburgh [CC BY-NC-ND] "Wagner... was a musical genius. He was unquestionably a proto-Nazi. Live with it," he said. "The idea that great artists become the most exemplary human beings is a romantic wish but demonstrably not the case."... Wagner's antisemitism - seen in an 1850 essay, Jewishness in Music - and his subsequent adoption by Adolf Hitler has resulted in him being shunned by music education course administrators and his works are effectively banned in Israel. He is regarded however, through works such as his Ring Cycle

Merry-Go-Round Mark Gertler (1891-1939) Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND] The alma mater of a long list of distinguished women from Rosalind Franklin and Dame Kate Bingham to Emily Mortimer and Rachel Weisz, is to rename the role of head girl because it is too "binary". The head girl of St Paul's Girls' School, one of the country's leading private schools, will be known as head of school after calls from pupils to make the role more inclusive. The school confirmed that the change would take effect from the next academic year, prompting outrage from some staff who claimed that it sent  a "damaging message that girls have to be ashamed to be seen as girls". "Why do the girls have to change their name?" a source said. "They should be teaching young women to be proud of their sex, not ashamed of it. It's very contradictory. How can you be a single-sex school that exists to empower girls to do well and at the same time support girls to ident

According to Oxfam the wealth of the world's 10 richest individuals has risen by £400bn since the start of the pandemic. That sum could apparently vaccinate every adult on Earth, as well as restore to the world's poorest people the income they lost in 2020... It is hard to quarrel with the report's conclusion that current economic policies have enabled "a super-rich elite to amass wealth in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression, while billions of people are struggling to make ends meet. Political economists on both the left and the right are coming to the conclusion that the gap between rich and poor people is destabilising and dangerous to democracy...The world is getting less equal... Vague Oxfam exhortations that we need to "shape more equal societies" are unlikely to get anywhere. Whatever Davos may pretend, the world does not have one government or one tax regime, let alone one ideology... Duty Paid Ralph Hedley (1848-1913) Photo C