Journalists From England

"If it had been known at the time that he'd got 'previous convictions' the context of the case would have been very different."

"When I watched the murderous attacks on New York and Washington, my first reactions were of incredulity horror and sympathy for the victims and their families But when I came to write my weekly editorial for The New Statesman the following day (knowing that most readers would not see it until that Friday), I thought I should raise wider issues. I suggested that billions of poor people throughout the world would support the attacks because they blamed America for their plight and saw no alternative but to strike out in rage."

"[T]he US government and media (along with their British cheerleaders) themselves raise the ideological stakes when they claim that we have seen attacks on freedom and democracy. That is one way of putting it: another is to say that these attacks, using deeply symbolic targets, have hit a civilisation that has grown complacent, selfish and in some respects decadent."

"For our issue dated 14 January, the New Statesman published a cover showing the Star of David standing on a Union Jack, with the words: "A kosher conspiracy?"

"[[Nick Cohen|[Nick] Cohen]] assures me that he has no intention of following [[Paul Johnson|[Paul] Johnson]]'s long political journey. Since he is a personal friend, whose journalism I admire (I hired him twice, once on the Independent on Sunday, once on the NS), I believe him. But I don't underestimate the sense of betrayal on the left. When the rest of the press was cheering on [[Tony Blair|[Tony] Blair]], particularly in new Labour's early days, Cohen was his most virulent critic and almost the only coherent voice asserting "real left" values. Now, in some eyes, he has deserted the cause when it needs him most."

"Some of these thoughts, expressed more clumsily than I later wished, found their way into the New Statesman leader that, as editor, I wrote barely 24 hours after the attacks."

"[Editorial on the September 11 attacks published shortly afterwards] American bond traders, you may say, are as innocent and as undeserving of terror as Vietnamese or Iraqi peasants. Well, yes and no. Yes, because such large-scale carnage is beyond justification, since it can never distinguish between the innocent and the guilty. No, because Americans, unlike Iraqis and many others in poor countries, at least have the privileges of democracy and freedom that allow them to vote and speak in favour of a different order. If the United States often seems a greedy and overweening power, that is partly because its people have willed it. They preferred George Bush to Al Gore and both to Ralph Nader."

"[Y]ou may be sure that, if the Soviet Union were still a reality and a threat, the debt crisis, which now affects some 50 countries and has reached previously unimagined levels (some countries have to use a quarter of their export earnings to service debt), would not exist."

"The death of the Soviet Union also deprived the global poor of something more intangible: not exactly hope, perhaps, but the sense of an alternative, of possibility."

"[A]buse is deeply distressing and highly damaging to the victim. It is not made significantly more so because the perpetrator holds a powerful political position or wears black robes. Such claims excite journalists and attract more public attention; they do not help victims."

"Some "victims" will make false allegations, often prompted by lawyers, in the hope of substantial payments."

"As New Statesman editor, he published articles denigrating the north Wales victims as "damaged" and manipulated by journalists such as me, all part of a modern witch-hunt in which the real victims were those accused of abuse."

"It turned out there were only two other people in the room when she had said it [...] She had said it – I got that absolutely confirmed."

"[Following an interview or briefing with Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street] After she finished she took an extremely large scotch. Margaret had quite a capacity. [...] It was Tuesday at 5pm and her next engagement was her weekly audience with the Queen… The one person in the world of whom Margaret Thatcher was frightened was the Queen. That's why she downed a lot."

"The repulsive Paul Gadd — or Gary Glitter — as I cannot bring myself to call him because of its frivolous connotations says he wants police protection because some "nutter" might kill him. I'm not sure how much of a nutter one would have to be to want to kill Gadd, a convicted paedophile with a penchant for small girls. Most rational people would find it quite acceptable if he were to be taken out and shot in the back of the head, and will be regretting that he came through his three years in a Vietnamese jail in quite such good shape. I am not for a moment suggesting that anyone outraged by the existence of Gadd, or who fears for their own children when this man is loose on British soil, should take the law into his own hands. I do, though, fail to see how making him sign the sex offenders' register is going to make the blindest bit of difference. The police have better things to do than to protect this piece of filth. The only reason why they should stick close to him, though, is to keep him away from our children."

"[On the Battle of Orgreave] When the horses rode through some of the miners and knocked a few down, the Queen said words [to the effect of], "Oh, that’s awful! Oh, we shouldn’t do that!." And for the Queen to make a political comment like that was news."

"Wilby argued for "nuance" in these matters, while denigrating those who dared complain of abuse. There was nothing nuanced in the material Wilby collected and created over his career – they were crime scene photographs of our most vulnerable children being raped for his pleasure."

"The New Statesman has now completed an internal review of all articles related to child sexual abuse that were published during Wilby’s editorship, or subsequently contributed by Wilby as a writer. Approximately 19,000 articles were published during Wilby's seven years as editor, of which 126 have a significant reference to child sexual abuse or paedophilia. Of those 126 articles, 12 contain comments or arguments that could reasonably be interpreted as either minimising the seriousness of child sexual abuse, or as questioning the integrity of victims, whistle-blowers, police or journalists investigating allegations of sexual abuse of children. Four of the 12 remained available on newstatesman.com as of 18 August, and they have now been taken down. Subsequent to his time as editor, Wilby contributed 659 columns or pieces to the New Statesman from 2006 to 2022, of which 37 contain a significant reference to child sexual abuse or paedophilia. Of those 37 articles, four contain arguments that the degree of public concern around child sexual abuse is out of proportion to the actual scope and scale of the horrendous crime. Those four articles have been taken down."

"Don't take on a black kid from northern England and then make them do gang stories all the time [...] When I came back from maternity leave, my first 22 stories were all mother and baby stories."

"Unfortunately, we're in an era where all the guys who don't like journalists are winning the battle of convincing the general public that all journalists are one up from snakes – or actually the snakes – instead of the defenders of truth, and it really doesn't help when you have people masquerading as journalists."

"I am the first to admit we have dropped a few clangers — partly out of carelessness, partly out of an overzealous wish to run a story. The Eyes success has made us more cautious recently, particularly about business news. One has to be more careful about people in the City than when writing about, say, Margaret Thatcher, when one can be more knockabout."

"It is wonderful to be able to let off steam in the Eye. Wonderful, when someone annoys me, to say "let's have a go." I rely much on my instincts. When you bear in mind the material we have printed over the years, I have to rack my brains to think of stories I regret. We have tended to pick the right targets."

"I have developed a habit when confronted by letters to the editor in support of the Israeli government to look at the signature to see if the writer has a Jewish name. If so, I tend not to read it."

"My motto is publish and be sued."

"Standing up for Dan is standing up for the very idea of GB News. If he falls, we all fall."

"Including the careerist ambitious ones who are currently gunning for his job. These people are worse than the woke mob, because these vultures are giving the mob ammunition and essentially escalating the channel's demise."

"The Pashtuns invariably used violence to resolve their differences, which led to feuds between families lasting for generations. The Pashtun language even contains a specific word to define revenge between cousins. In many respects these frontiersmen were warriors in the Homeric sense, enjoying fighting for its own sake, often internecine, for the blood feud was central to their way of life. They took offence easily, were jealous of their personal honour and savagely cruel to any opponent no longer able to defend himself. They tortured, mutilated and killed without compunction."

"I will not be appearing on Dan Wootton Tonight without Dan Wootton. Dan Wootton had a significant part to play in building GB News."

"To make it super simple for Dan: GB News is not "anti-establishment". It is a London telly channel owned by a hedge funder and an investment firm. The deputy chairman of the governing Conservative party is one of its presenters, as is a recently knighted former cabinet minister whose father was a long-serving editor of the Times."

"He invited me along pre-launch, he also brought so many people onboard. Behind the cameras as well as on-screen talent."

"I want to reiterate my regret over last night’s exchange with Laurence [Fox] on GB News. Having looked at the footage, I can see how inappropriate my reaction to his totally unacceptable remarks appears to be and want to be clear that I was in no way amused by the comments. I reacted as I did out of shock and surprise in an off guard moment while working out how to respond as he continued to speak by searching for tweets Ava had sent earlier in the day while having them read out in my ear at the same time. However, I should have intervened immediately to challenge offensive and misogynistic remarks. I apologise unreservedly for what was a very unfortunate lapse in judgement on my part under the intense pressure of a bizarre exchange. I know I should have done better. I'm devastated that I let down the team and our supportive GBN family. We seek to tackle the issue and not the person, which I intend to stress again on air tonight."

"You can imagine them freaking out in the gallery!!!!!"

"All in all, the spectacle of Dan Wootton begging for nuance and empathy is the heat death of irony. The two crucial things about people like Dan is that they are, without exception, monstrous hypocrites – and they also reduce the world. Their entire business is making human experience smaller. There are about six or seven basic story templates into which they believe all other people's lives must be squeezed, whether or not they want them to be. So to find the high priest of the reductive suddenly asking for an acknowledgment of complexity feels a little much."

"There are dark forces out to try and take this brilliant channel down. And that's because GB News is the biggest threat to the establishment in decades, and they will stop at nothing to destroy us."

"I, like all fallible human beings, have made errors of judgement in the past. But the criminal allegations being made against me are simply untrue. I would like nothing more than to address those spurious claims – I could actually spend the next two hours doing so – but on the advice of my lawyers, I cannot comment further. But I have been thinking much over the past few days about the current state of social media, where any allegation can be made in an attempt to get someone cancelled, but it is impossible to defend yourself against thousands of trolls."

"These past few days I have been the target of a smear campaign by nefarious players with an axe to grind."

"The globalist remoaner coup continues. The excellent and brave Home Secretary Suella Braverman is being replaced by Grant Shapps. This is an anti-democratic disgrace. Shame on Liz Truss. We backed you to keep them out. They're now in control."

"Even though Meghan [Markle] doesn't plan to attend, she wants to cause maximum damage to the royal family."

"Personally, I regret the absence of Sirk, Boetticher, Donen, Vertov, Tourneur, Whale, Kazan, Boorman, Malle and Roeg, but recognise that Malcolm is making a statement by omitting Spielberg. There are no Australian directors represented, and no SF flicks. All lists reveal something about the compiler, and there's a lot of sex and socialism here."

"It's increasingly clear now that there is a move among some public health officials and politicians to create an ultra-cautious biosecurity state, copying the likes of China."

"This gutless woman has downgraded her criticism to unconscious bias and admitted that the person who she claims to be the royal racist actually wasn't racist at all. I think there are many issues with this letter...she still wants to bring down the royal family...[but] she will be unsuccessful."

"[I]n Liz we must now Truss."

"Jeanne Moreau was the perfect choice for Catherine: she gives a performance full of gaiety and charm without conveying an empty-headed bimbo. She makes the watcher understand that this is no ordinary woman whom both men adore. It is possibly the most complete portrait of any feminine character in the entire ouevre of the New Wave and it made her an international star."

"Jules et Jim seemed revolutionary at the time, but Truffaut's revolution, unlike Godard's, implied not so much the destruction of the past as a turning back to the humanism of Vigo, Renoir and the French cinema of the 30s. The film's "rondo of love" represents both a backward glance at the best of the past and a forward glance into the cinema's future. Its enthusiasm for what the cinema is and can be is what makes it so special."

"No film I ever saw was any more dramatic than the story of my parents, whose marriage was so soon overtaken by a tragedy that received huge publicity and effectively destroyed the happiness of both."

"For [[w:Thomas Mann|[Thomas] Mann]]'s interior dialogue is substituted some of the most ravishingly wrought images Visconti has ever committed to the screen. Aschenbach’s arrival at the Hotel des Bains of the early century is meticulously detailed and observed. His first sight of the boy, in the bosom of his Polish family, his sniffing out of the cholera epidemic which suddenly decimates the tourists, his ill-at-ease attempts to refurbish himself with the help of the hotel barber, all these episodes could scarcely be better done in terms of direction, art direction and acting. True, the camera lingers lovingly on what has been created. There are times when Visconti scarcely seems concerned about moving the story onwards. Yet it serves its purpose quite as well at Mann’s prose. It is in the final half hour that one's doubts grow, as the boy smiles and smiles at the man, and the man visibly dies under the untouching assault. Perhaps it is here that Dirk Bogarde's otherwise superb performance shows a bit at the seams. We become aware that he is an actor acting, manoeuvring a mask, and that Visconti is watching him do it, lost in admiration."

"I've had the luck if that is what you call it to get stuck in a lift with the great Orson Welles and his large wolfhound to take tea with Charlie Chaplin and to interview the always testy John Ford. Ford hated critics and had stomach trouble at the time He summoned me into the room as follows: "Come on in. I can deal with two shits at once"."

"All [[w:Mrinal Sen|[Mrinal] Sen]]'s films, even his most lightweight, have attacked, with undisguised horror and anger, the poverty, exploitation and inherent hypocrisy of Indian society. That is why he has remained a hero for so many of the young, who criticise [[w:Satyajit Ray|[Satyajit] Ray]] for a lack of overt political commitment and wish to see a truly revolutionary Indian cinema undiluted by European classicist and humanist sympathies. Yet, like Ray, he is certainly not a specifically Indian director whose films show no outside influences at work. In fact, it is almost impossible to talk with him – and he is an indefatigable talker – without constant reference to European, Russian and particularly English culture, often literary rather than cinematic."

"Being in the middle of this witch hunt has made me think a lot about the sort of journalist and broadcaster I aspire to be – one focused on the massive political threats facing this country, not on personal attacks."

"To publish a book on the "100 best films of the century" is really putting your head on the block, even if that "best" is qualified as "personal". Derek Malcolm's choice strikes me as sound and stimulating, a mixture of the conservative and the adventurous."