What’s behind the dangerous new notion that democracy should be left to the well-educated. It’s been a rough ten years for democracy. It isn’t just that Donald Trump was elected against the wishes of the majority of American voters, and that he then tried to overturn an election that he lost. Nor is it even ...

Some months ago, Jennifer Howard used a critical review of Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell to argue that fantasy should be about “high seriousness,” “magic that battles for the soul of the world,” and above all, “the epic sense of Good and Evil, of things larger than ourselves, that makes the best fantasy ...