Journalism
The day I woke up… to hear that only Tracey Thorn loved me
It’s unusual for musicians to become writers. The trajectory of yearning is meant to be the other way around. When…
Auberon Waugh — a demon on the page, an angel off it
Auberon Waugh was happy to admit that most journalism is merely tomorrow’s chip paper but, of all the journalists of…
Investigative journalists: new crime fiction reviewed
Despite being well-travelled as the BBC’s world affairs editor, John Simpson doesn’t roam far from home in his spy thriller,…
Critical injuries: the perils of book reviews
A decade ago, a publisher produced a set of short biographies of Britain’s 20th-century prime ministers, which I reviewed unenthusiastically.…
Bad news for fans of good TV drama – there’s three more corkers to keep up with
This week was bad news for fans of good television drama series — mainly because there’s now three more of…
What will Katie Hopkins do next?
In her memoir Rude, the former Mail Online columnist Katie Hopkins reveals her true self. She does this by accident,…
Art and aspiration
When Adam Gopnik arrived in Manhattan in late 1980 he was an art history postgrad so poor that he and…
The right kind of dumbing down
Thanks to meteoric advances in computational power, it is now possible to take abundant data from a wide range of…
A feral, all-powerful press? The Whittingdale story disproves that
For weeks, Westminster has been full of rumours about the private life of a certain cabinet member. It was said…
Why I feel compelled to defend Boris
I got Boris Johnson into trouble once, without meaning to. The two of us had been driven hither and thither…
Virtual reality news is coming - and the implications are ominous
John Humphrys staggering around in a piece of ‘virtual reality’ headgear that looked like binoculars and made him feel sick…
Close encounters on the starship Enterprise
For a show with a self-proclaimed ‘five-year mission’, Star Trek hasn’t done badly. Gene Roddenberry’s ‘Wagon train to the stars’…
David Astor: the saintly, tormented man who remade the Observer
Before embarking on this book, Jeremy Lewis was told by his friend Diana Athill that his subject, the newspaper editor…
Two big hitters leave the crease: Brendon McCullum and Hugh McIlvanney
Two great men have just bowed out from their chosen trades and it is bloody sad. The New Zealand cricket…
Keith Moon’s wedding-night abseil and other marvellous false memories
False memory disasters, from Keith Moon’s wedding-night abseil to Sophia Loren’s peanut addiction
Paris: a beautiful, damned city
The much-lamented journalist and bon viveur Sam White, late of the rue du Bac, The Spectator and the Evening Standard,…
From Adrian Gill to A.A. Gill — with love and thanks
Often, Christmas is a time for moaning after the night before, when the seasonal drinking is remembered (if remembered at…
There’s a right way to lose at the Oxford Union. I did the wrong way
The way not to win a debate at the Oxford Union, I’ve just discovered, is to start your speech with…
Dear Mary: My husband has shaved his head for a newspaper feature
Q. My partner, a leading political commentator on a national newspaper, recently agreed to shave off his hair at the…
Owen Sheers disregards the first commandment of novel-writing: to show, not tell
This is a thriller, a novel of betrayal and separation, and a reverie on death and grieving. The only key…
Elizabeth Day urges women to be more ‘me first’, less ‘no, no, after you’
Paradise City, Elizabeth Day’s third novel, comes with an accompanying essay on The Pool — an online magazine for the…
Edward Thomas: the prolific hack (who wrote a book review every three days for 14 years) turned to poetry just in time
Edward Thomas was gloomy as Eeyore. In 1906 he complained to a friend that his writing ‘was suffering more &…
Without Gallipoli, we’d have no Page 3
Some years ago I paid a visit to the site of the Gallipoli landings because I was mildly obsessed with…
Lesley Blanch: a true original on the wilder shores of exoticism
Lesley Blanch (1904–2007) will be remembered chiefly for her gloriously extravagant The Wilder Shores of Love, the story of four…
Why journalists should boycott the Comment Awards
Nick Cohen 3 November 2018 9:00 am
Shortly before his death, the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote that capitalism crushed the integrity of artists and intellectuals. Assessed…