Associate editor, culture, Times and Sunday Times (mat cover). Previously: EIC, Guardian Weekend magazine; Guardian arts editor; New Statesman long reads
Thank you for all the nice things said today about
@guardianweekend
. It means the world to a 💯 team currently sending next week’s issue: we’ll give it our all while it lasts. Hugely sad for
@guardianreview
@guardianguide
Support
@guardian
if you value it
Writers, reporters, publishers, agents: I’m now open to pitches as features editor
@NewStatesman
: looking for deeply reported and narrative-driven long form (3000w+) that gets to the heart of how we live now 1/3
After nearly 20 years on the paper, and 400+ issues of
@guardianweekend
, today is my last at the Guardian. I will miss colleagues hugely, but it’s time for a change and a lie-down. We had a blast though
Work news! After two years at the New Statesman, I’m excited to join the brilliant
@timesculture
team as associate editor, culture and books, for 2024. Particularly, not exclusively, keen on hearing from theatre & vis art worlds - but all good things considered
First time we've done this: you can now order
@galdemzine
's takeover of
@guardianweekend
through the Guardian Bookshop: hurry while limited stocks (500 issues) last!
Thrilled to be joining
@NewStatesman
’s brilliant team of editors and writers, where I’ll be features editor from June. Send me your best long read ideas and stories around then!
RIP lovely Clive James, the funniest, kindest, most original, and only very occasionally irascible of contributors, who always hit a deadline and never missed a beat. He worried that his credibility as a dying man was in tatters, but thank God his writing never flagged
I wrote about Betsy Stanko and her project to transform the policing of rape. In other words, start criminalising it.
Huge thanks to those who gave their time inside and outside the police, and eds
@ClareLongrigg
@henrosefield
@davidedgarwolf
This is a beautiful long read by
@petepaphides
, on his father’s sudden death and the music they shared, but this is the detail that gets me:
(no paywall)
I wrote about private schools and the cold winds of change blowing through them. Can their £3bn in tax breaks and charitable status survive a Labour government - the most state-educated in history? 1/4
⬇️
‘In 2021-22 Eton would have paid more than £10m in VAT were it charged at 20% on the £50.6m in fees shown in its accounts. Add exemptions for business rates, corporation tax and gift aid, and the taxpayer subsidises an Eton boy at a much higher rate than a state-school pupil’ 3/4
Are we facing a mental health crisis, or overdiagnosing mass unhappiness? This is smart, nuanced and moving by
@SEMcBain
on the psychiatrists who argue against labels
Send me a brief outline (1-3 pars) at melissa.denes[at] with a sense of how you’d report it, and why it matters/will make a gripping read: I am all ears 3/3
I spoke to Elena Ferrante about Maggie Gyllenhaal’s new film of The Lost Daughter, Olivia Colman as anti-heroine, bad mothers, rewrites, dolls and her lifelong love affair with cinema
The magazine remains in the very best hands, belonging to
@ruthlewy
, before an autumn reinvention by the great
@meropemills
, who gave me the job of a lifetime eight terrifying years ago, for which much thanks 🙏
Tomorrow's cover: an unmissable Decca Aitkenhead
@deccajourno
interview with Anthony Scaramucci, on his 11 days in the White House ('totally enjoyable'), Trump ('very funny'),
@guardianweekend
('communist magazine') & oh so much more
No field off-limits, but interested in climate, inequality, science, internet culture, crime, sport, health & more. International reporting/writers v welcome 2/3
That Tory MPs think wearing a skirt is a ‘ploy’ only reveals their/the PM’s inability to look a clever woman in the face. Read
@AngelaRayner
's thread and Kate Mossman’s brilliant, subtle profile of her instead:
Women in politics face sexism and misogyny every day - and I’m no different.
This morning’s is the latest dose of gutter journalism courtesy of
@MoS_Politics
🧵👇🏻1/9
The Met's decision to charge six people for attending Sarah Everard's vigil is even uglier when you consider her murderer 'arrested' her for breaking lockdown rules. This is brilliant by
@RMCunliffe
on why politicians look the other way
This is a beautiful obit by
@shattenstone
, full of surprises, for Guardian picture editor Mark Bygraves. Pic at the top is classic/daily half-hour-to-deadline-got-you-a-world-exclusive-boss face, and I’ll miss it
This is a rich and subtle portrait by
@Will___lloyd
of Rory Stewart’s self-mythologising, from Iraq to the polishing of his Wiki page as ‘Chezza88’ (his mother’s bulldog)
This is an incredible story by Kate Mossman: the rollercoaster love affair that inspired Joni Mitchell’s Carey, as told by ‘mean old daddy’ Cary himself (she loved him, couldn’t spell him)
Who wants to prosecute rape in 2024? Almost no one, as barristers quit and the courts collapse (sometimes literally). Last year I followed two trials to understand how we got here
🙏
@jennystevens
@kiracochrane
, but especially to Tyrone Silcott
Honoured to be in this beautiful best-of
@gdnlongread
magazine ft a typeface lost to time & linen-embossed cover in fluoro Pantone 804. Available in all good transport hubs tomorrow and
@Guardian_Bkshop
now.
Preview + lovely designers geeking out here
⬇️
‘If Weinstein’s conviction was a hopeful moment, any optimism I felt is gone’: extraordinary piece by Caitlin McNamara on a year-long fight to hold another powerful man to account
Such terrible news - Deborah Orr was a brilliant dancer, writer, editor and I think of a line of hers often, on nits, politics or boozy lunches. This on her accidental hiring of Alexander Chancellor was typically great, and shows why she was so loved
‘Her exploitation serves as micro- and macrocosm for the entire girl industrial complex’: whip-smart, big-hearted piece on Britney Spears and the cost of female success by
@lenadunham
‘Private schools argue they take pressure off the state. But they cost the rest of us through “tax expenditure” – the money the state doesn’t get to spend on other schools (or paramedics, or buses). This sum – £3bn a year – could quadruple the national libraries budget’ 2/4
Congrats to two very smart
@NewStatesman
writers on their
@bsmeinfo
win and high recommendation, respectively:
@SEMcBain
and
@sarahmanavis
. Highly recommend Sophie's long read on people who hear voices here 1/2
This is a fascinating listen (and read in this week's 110th anniversary
@NewStatesman
) covering 40 years behind the scenes in Westminster, also ft
@helenlewis
‘They say if you work, you’ll pull yourself up. It’s a lie’: thank you to the Williams siblings for sharing their stories with
@craig_easton
@hackneylad
, from 1992 to 2020
‘Nothing prepares you… this is scorched earth’: so many telling images and conversations in this journey from Ukraine’s devastated frontline to Kyiv, by
@MacaesBruno
After completing his master's on ancient pig foddering, Simon Roper created an oral history of the London accent from 1340-2006: love this by Kate Mossman on a very English YouTube star
‘I think you should feel able to put them on the next flight out’: what the foreign office told the US the day before Anne Sacoolas and family quit the UK.
@shattenstone
talks to the parents of Harry Dunn about grief, Trump & their criminal case vs Raab
Ask not what will make you happy (you don't know) but what will enlarge you (you do): favourite bit of advice from
@guardianweekend
resident wise owl, moving on to bigger things in style 🙏
@oliverburkeman
We’ve been working with
@guardianweekend
to co-edit an all-Black special of their annual conversation issue, featuring discussions between eight industry greats & the winning entries from our young writers competition!
Pick up a copy in The Guardian this Saturday to see it!💫
Thrilled for everyone
@guardianweekend
, you made the 2018 newspaper magazine of the year! And ace to get a judges’ shout out for ‘a great stable of writers’: without you ETC
@bsmeinfo
#bsmeawards
This is such an original deep dive into the strange, lonely mind of the King, ft Steve Bannon, Ceausescu, Kathleen Raine, Transylvania and a cartload of cheese
'He passed a law banning partying. He instructed his clowns to party day and night. Mingle. Double dip': if you haven't yet read
@EdwardDocx
on the demise of Boris🤡, it is a wild, brilliant catharsis (💯art by
@jackmrhughes
)
This is nasty, and from the 2016 London mayoral playbook, when David Cameron/Lynton Crosby sent Indian voters a dogwhistle letter backing Goldsmith vs Khan
'I haven’t met a politician who is ready to do what it takes. And by that, I mean resigning'
@gretathunberg
and
@bjork
talk greenwashing, music, the matriarchy and dog memes, from her upcoming guest edit of
@NewStatesman
In the early 90s, Donald Trump hosted and judged the Elite Look of the Year contest. This is how those who were there remember it. Powerful
@guardian
investigation by
@Lucy_Osborne
@harryfoxdavies
@skirchy
Huge congrats
@garyyounge
, winner of
@TheOrwellPrize
for Journalism, writer of unimprovable sentences, for pieces including this on racism, critical thinking and the commentariat for
@NewStatesman
Free to read
‘I’m going back to where I started, with a dog-eared notebook in my pocket and cheap pens leaking on to my shirts… I’m joining writers I’ve relied on for years’ Lovely
@NewStatesman
column by newbie
@AndrewMarr9
Philately, fellatio, leather trousers: a rollercoaster new year Blind Date, right down to the scores (and a reminder of life pre tier 4, when this happened) 🔥
Former Met senior leader Brian Paddick told me the Casey report shows how little has changed. He was warned, “It’s OK to be female, black, or gay – but not more than one, and provided you behave like a straight white man.”
More about police culture here:
Elena Ferrante’s last
@guardianweekend
column, after a year that covered first love, cigarettes, Matteo Salvini, Instagram, insomnia, Daniel Day-Lewis & more (all on site). Huge pleasure working with her, translator Ann Goldstein & illustrator
@AndreaUcini
'The Exclusive Brethren don't vote, watch TV or eat with outsiders. And for those who leave - like my family - there is no going back'
Definitive, deeply moving long read on the Brethren (whose businesses won £2.2bn in Covid contracts) by
@pippa_bailey
.
It’s here!
@MichelleObama
talks falling in love, feeling lost in her 20s, her passion for Prince Philip, keeping it real in the White House & much more, with superstars & schoolkids. Click through for audio