Category Archives: Journalism

about working for the Guardian is that you get to hear really improbable rumours about Rod Liddle’s sex life. Continue reading →

Charles Arthur has a blog now. Continue reading →

I was enchanted by the obituary of Robert Burchfield in the Times, which contained one paragraph that let you peek through the keyhole into worlds of unimaginable drudgery. The parentheses surrounding it were the visual equivalent of a pleasurable sniff. … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Various people, with varying degrees of kindliness, have brought to my attention Francis Wheen’s reading out on the News Quiz the Guardian‘s varied corrections to my profile of Dan Dennett. Ah, well; at least Professor Dennett is now assured of … Continue reading → Continue reading →

From the Guardian last week, some time: a picture of a bald man in spectacles eating a sandwich, captioned: “Michael Howard enjoys a tuna sandwich he made himself at a training centre in Middlesbrough”. Continue reading →

Salon reports that Theresa Heinz Kerry has published her tax returns, which show that her income last year was around $5m. This is a rather mind-boggling figure but what really struck me was the headline they put on the story: … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Bush falling off his bicycle inspired all the obvious jokes about training wheels — it is a telling comment on his record that these jokes should seem so obvious — but also a quite fascinating lie. The press spokesdroid claimed … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I have never seriously proposed to a senior BBC apparatchik that we make a programme called “Infanticide: the case for common sense.” Continue reading →

My friend Brian Harris is every writing journalist’s idea of a photographer: modest, equable, sober. There is a story about him and Charlie Wilson, when Wilson was editor of the Times, in which one of them concluded a spirited artistic … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Just for the record … I mean, the Richard Desmond story is so wonderful that Felix rang me up to say he wet himself with laughter reading it in the Guardian on the tube, so I assume any English readers … Continue reading → Continue reading →