The Critical Commentator

Women Washing Clothes in a Welsh Stream Julius Caesar Ibbotson (1759-1817) Photo Credit: Glasgow Life Museums [CC BY-NC-ND]   At the 99 Vintage store in the centre of Winchester, curated rails of worn-in Dickies trousers sit along-side paint-splattered band T-shirts and a 1964 track-and-field hoodie with the left cuff falling off. "We call it the trashed look," said Jack Edwards, 27, who co-owns the family business. "In the past I would have rejected things because of a mark, but now we see the positives in some stains and distressing. It helps tell the story of the piece. His brother, Harrison, 25, agrees. He said vintage items with visible damage can sometimes even sell for higher prices: People are far more open to the ride it's been on - and some clothes look better with rips or holes. High-end brands are also trying to capitalise on the trend: Rimowa recently launched its recrafted programme, which takes beaten-up old suitcases and sells them at discounted price...

A Silent Greeting Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912) Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND] No one knows quite how to dole out gushing, unbridled praise like an American ... and from a young age [I] was taught that a compliment (warranted or not) was the best way to make your way in the world, whether that was at work, school or in relationships. No polite greeting should be considered complete without an added "I love your shoes!" or a handy "Now that is a great top!" Frantically complimenting people and ourselves is a national pastime, second only to baseball. Researchers have found that ... Americans often opt for the more extreme word when constructing a sentence, so things are "great" not just "good", or we'll "love" something not just "like" it... It was recently reported that in China, where young people are less and less interested in elements of American culture such as Taylor Swift and the iPhone, they are more excited t...

Le Pont Boieldieu a Rouen Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) Photo Credit: Birmingham Museums Trust [CCO]    In a result that the pollsters had utterly failed to predict, the left-wing New Popular Front (NPF) coalition won this month's snap parliamentary elections on a manifesto that includes a 90 per cent tax band on income more than €411,000 a year, the reintroduction of a wealth tax and spending commitments of between €150 billion and €287 billion over three years. In practice, there is little chance that the left will be able to put its programme into practice. If it formed a government, it would be a minority one, and anyway, the coalition may never get that far. The NPF is in danger of falling apart even before it has chosen its candidate for the post of prime minister. Nevertheless, the elections have provoked anxiety among the rich in France who fear, with some justification, that the tide is about to turn against them whatever the colour of the next government. With the cou...

  Dancing Figures Max Weber (1881-1961) Photo Credit: University of Reading [CC BY-NC-SA] As Graziano Di Prima follows Giovanni Pernice out of Strictly Come Dancing , defenestrated for similar alleged offences around being a bit "tough" in training sessions, I have to say they have my sympathy. Because those celebrity contestants deserve everything they get. These dreary newsreaders, ex-politicians, bit-part actors and half-arsed chefs present themselves (after relentless petitioning by agents) for the annual ritual humiliation purely in the hope of becoming more famous and turning a buck. The newsy ones want a chat show, the politicos want a gig on daytime telly and the actors want to persuade us they are more than  mere glove puppets (which they aren't) and deserve another crack at the big time. They think this is a shortcut. And being knocked about a bit by some greasy Italian hoofer is the very least their vanity deserves. Hunger for fame is ugly. It is the worst poss...

  It's 1'30pm. Nila and Arion arrive home after finishing school for the day. They let themselves in, make some food, then sit down to do homework, or practise piano, or do the housework they've been asked to do. Their parents won't be home for a few hours yet. The children sometimes go out with friends to play in the street or wander the fields. The only real rule is no screen time unless everything else has been taken care of. So far, so normal, perhaps except the sister and brother are just 10 and 8, and they've been living this kind of unsupervised mini-adult life for years. They live in Stavanger, on the south-west coast of Norway. Like all of their friends, they've been walking to and from school alone since they first attended at the age of six. They were given their own set of house keys soon after. This is the parenting way in Norway ... with an emphasis on independence, self-determination and responsibility, with a dash of outdoor fun thrown in for goo...

Scientists have raised hopes for a cheap and simple test for autism after discovering consistent differences between the microbes found in the guts of autistic people and those without the condition. The finding suggests that a routine stool sample test could help doctors to identify autism earlier, meaning people would receive their diagnosis, and hopefully support, much faster than with the lengthy procedure used in clinics today. "Usually it takes three to four years to make a confirmed diagnosis for suspected autism, with most children diagnosed at six years old," said Prof Qi Su, a specialist in molecular biology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the first author of the study. "Our microbiome biomarker panel has a high performance in children under the age of four, which may help facilitate an early diagnosis." ... Wong Tai Sin unknown artist Photo Credit:  Horniman Museum and Gardens [CC BY-SA] In the UK  and many other western countries, about one in...

It is 5.15am and I am walking down my street, feeling smug. The buildings are bathed in peachy dawn light. "Win the morning and you win the day," suggests the productivity guru Tim Ferris. The prize is within my sights: an oat-milk latte, my reward for getting up ridiculously early... Red Dawn John Miller Nicholson ( 1840-1913) Photo Credit: Manx National Heritage [CC BY-NC]  Why am I doing this? Because, in an attempt to become one of the elite superbeings who are members of the 5am club, I am trying a week of very early starts. Being an early bird is increasingly popular among the rich and famous, with everyone from Jennifer Lopez, Jennifer Aniston and the Kardashians to tech bros such as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Apple's Tim Cook and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey subscribing to the club. So do Anna Wintour and Michelle Obama. Gwyneth Paltrow is a longtime member, sharing on Instagram how she rises at 5am for a 30-minute tongue scrape and Ayurvedic oil pull (me neit...

  A poet, a linguist and a marketing guru join forces to come up with the name of an unborn child. The start of a bad joke? The plotline for the next episode of Black Mirror ? Neither - rather, it's one of the jobs a "mummy concierge" to the super-rich can be asked to do. Baby-proofing a yacht to ensure the plugs fit a breast pump, finding the best potty-training expert in town and reminding prospective mums to pack their facial mist in their overnight bag are just some of the other tasks Tiffany Norris has put in her diary of late. Mrs Elizabeth Young Mitchell and her Baby Alfred George Stevens (1817-1875) Photo Credit: Tate CC [BY-NC-ND] Essentially an assistant to very wealthy women before and after they give birth, Norris shines a light on the new extremes taken by parents who are willing to pay her fees which start at £275 an hour. Everything from sourcing a bespoke £5000 nightdress to wear while giving birth, to packing an overnight bag for the suite in a private ho...

Twenty-four years ago, when I was 24, I did my first reading in an American bookshop. At the end, in the question-and-answer bit, a middle-aged lady with a disgruntled look on her face put her hand up.: "Yeah, I don't get it."  I asked her what she didn't get. "It just doesn't add up. I mean, if you didn't ha ve any money - then how'd you go to that fancy university?" Now it was my turn to be confused: "Um ... well, it was free." "Whaddya mean? Like a scholarship?" "No. It was just free for everybody. Our taxes pay for it." I will never forget the gasp that went around that Barnes and Noble. So I kept going. "And I didn't pay for accommodation, either - we couldn't afford it, so Brent council gave me a full grant. Oh, and then my little brother got run over by a truck during my first year and the NHS rebuilt his entire right hand for free." More gasping. I genuinely thought some of the older members...

                                                         Anxiety, Head of a Girl Jean- Baptiste Greuse (1725-1805) Photo Credit: Victoria Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND]   Anguish equals cool ... It's not just uncool to be cheerful, it's a bit, well ... common. Misery is rarefied, elite, special. It singles you out. Once, inertia and ennui were indulgences of the relatively leisured classes and something of that sheen of moneyed dysfunction remains. Rolling your sleeves up, getting the job done, good humour, hard graft and grit all sound suspiciously like the qualities you find on the factory floor, down the mines or in the pub. Introspection, brooding and fleeting flashes of genius have a more "intellectual" ring. High brows are furrowed in thought, while low brows crease in laughter at the cheap joke... We have become too hooked on the tr...

  What does Billy Joel know about being a teenage girl? Enough, it turns out, to have written one of generation Z's favourite anthems: Vienna, a song nearly half a century old that's been adopted by many under-30s to describe their feelings of ennui. On TikTok, young women craft their identities around the song. One content creator said she booked a trip to the Austrian capital because of it; others have tattoos of the lyrics. "I want  to name my child Vienna but everyone says it reminds them of sausage," reads one comment on a clip of a young woman lip-syncing the tune. "Every teenage girl has their unexplainable emotional attachment to this song ... it's just a pinnacle part of girlhood," read one comment, liked 195,000 times. "No one understands a woman in her 20s like Billy Joel did when he wrote Vienna," reads another, with 424,000 likes... Ennui Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942) Photo Credit: Ashmolean Museum Oxford  Despite critics'...