James Marriott
@j_amesmarriott
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Columnist at The Times
London via Newcastle upon Tyne
Joined September 2016
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I wrote this about a declining colonial power controlled by a sclerotic ruling elite, obsessed by pageantry and squabbling over the past, and convinced of its own relevance even as it is marginalised on the world stage…
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Have just been privileged to witness the most east London moment of my life.
Spoken by a woman kayaking frantically down the Regent's canal towards a pedestrian on the towpath:
"Oh my God. Francesca is that you? We met in Goa! At the breath workshop! Remember?"
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Jacob Rees-Mogg has written a history book. The Times's reviewer calls it "staggeringly silly", "morally repellent", "clumsily written" and "pompous".
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I interviewed Bradley Wiggins about his cultural life. Probably my most challenging assignment as a journalist.
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Think I might be sitting next to the worst Tinder date of all time. Man is explaining his PhD thesis on artistic representations of cows in the eighteenth century: “it’s really interesting”.
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Slightly amazed to discover I am in trouble with The Bookseller Magazine (!) for holding the transgressive and countercultural belief that some books are better than others. Apparently thinking this is "damaging" and "marginalising"
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I was ambivalent about the novels but this was the best literary journalism that ever has been (and I think ever will be) written. There wasn't a week of my adult life that I didn't open this book.
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Why does this advert make it look like cats created a centre left political party in the early 2000s
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Its the time of year for Hardy's great poem The Darkling Thrush, written at the very beginning of the twentieth century and hardly surpassed since
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I wrote this about the collapse in humanities degrees over the last ten years. Its extremely depressing.
In English and history student numbers have fallen by a third
In foreign languages by almost 40 per cent
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This sounds incredibly made up but it's a verbatim quote
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I wrote this about the genius of the podcast The Rest is History which I am completely obsessed with
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I have found it — the most obnoxious opening paragraph ever written.
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Can’t wait to use the fact I stoically lived through the time of coronavirus as a stick to beat the decadent younger generation with in twenty years time
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I can't stop thinking about this. The most backhanded compliment I've ever received. A miniature emotional roller-coaster. Almost artful.
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I wrote this about the closure of the Wellcome exhibit and the extraordinary power of small groups of intolerant people with unpopular views to make things worse for everyone else
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Always hard, as a journalist, to anticipate how you will be received by readers. Discovered today that for the French my existence is frankly baffling
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I wrote this about Newcastle — growing up there, going back for Christmas, and realising that perhaps, despite my adolescent scepticism, it was a pretty wonderful place after all
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Took a number of pictures of my boss so he could update his Gmail display picture and now an algorithm on my phone has organised them into a video titled "Special Day" with an emotional piano soundtrack
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I wrote about how if you want to get on in life it’s much more important to be energetic than it is to be intelligent and how I wish somebody had pointed this out to me sooner.
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My dad rang me to explain that he’s been reading linguistic theory and now believes human conversation is inevitably based on social deceit and he will now be pursuing a strategy of “radical conversational honesty”. Looks like Christmas is going to be interesting.
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Things you don’t expect to read in the London Review of Books: brutal takedown of chicken katsu curry
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Flatmate told me he'd accidentally read the poetry I'd left open on my computer. Turned out to be the notes I'm taking for a piece about a podcast on UFOs. I feel strongly misunderstood
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Still going: apparently some of the most interesting artistic representations of cows were produced during the industrial revolution
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Great picture of a dog that looks like the poet Baudelaire.
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If you think your lockdown is difficult spare a thought for my friend who is staying with his girlfriend’s family who do weekly play readings together. Was going fine until his character had a speech about seducing his wife with a diamond bracelet balanced on his erect penis.
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Very strong author bio from Anne Carson in the new LRB
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I reviewed Prince Harry's annoying book
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Fascinating how stark this is. Almost half of British prime ministers experienced the death of a parent when they were children.
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I wrote about people who are pathologically obsessed with buying books
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Not keen on all these cobra meetings. Government should have chosen a more reassuring animal like a koala bear or a pomeranian.
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I interviewed the man who writes the Times crossword. He is so obsessed with crosswords he actually finds it hard to read because he sees all words as crossword clues.
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Very depressing to think of all the crap people are prepared to pay for and then realising that they’re also not prepared to pay for investigative journalism which holds the government to account
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Clive James is eighty. An excuse to re-read his greatest poem, The Book of my Enemy Has Been Remaindered:
"Chill the champagne and polish the crystal goblets!
The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am glad."
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I wrote about the intensity of being young and how it’s one of the most important things that will happen to most people
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I wrote this about the stressful modern obligation to have a unique and interesting personality and the overlooked charm of being normal and boring
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I reviewed Rory Stewart's memoir. Have to say I thought it was brilliant: vicious and brilliantly well-written.
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Some light amidst the gloom about shrinking space for book reviews. There will be ten (ten!) pages of book reviews in The Times this week. By my count 25 books covered: novels, non fiction, kids books, audiobooks, paperbacks, a rediscovered classic.
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I wrote this in defence of useless knowledge, general knowledge and wide, rambling curiosity in an age of specialisation
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The existence of The Portable Matthew Arnold implies a world in which a significant number of people worried about being caught on the move without access to the poems and essays of Matthew Arnold
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Samuel Pepys records how he can no longer concentrate because he has become addicted to checking the time on his new pocket watch. The smartphone of seventeenth century...
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I wrote about the strange myth of self-esteem, an idea born in 1970s counter culture, which persists even in the face of evidence that low-self esteem may in fact be a better indicator of success than high self esteem
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Here's The Times's list of the best literary non-fiction and essays published in 2019. Our pick for book of the year is Trick Mirror by
@jiatolentino
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Max Hastings is very cool. Perhaps the most self aware baby boomer ever?
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I wrote this about Jan Morris, a vastly overrated writer and a cruel parent
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You'd have thought if Google were really grateful to "all NHS and care workers" they'd have just paid their taxes
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I wrote this about the "loneliness epidemic" and the absurd modern belief that happiness and fulfilment are found in ourselves not in other people
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A man just shoved past me to get on the tube then spent the next two stops being dumped by his girlfriend. I think this may be the definition of schadenfreude.
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Developing an extreme dislike for the previous owner the book I’m reading
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Should have probably got round to it before but this has got to be one of the most brilliant history books I've ever read. What a pleasure to have a whole stretch of time explained so elegantly by someone so intelligent and insightful
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Sally Rooney debate rumbles on in the current Literary Review. But don't lots of great writers concentrate on "the minor interactions of a generational group". And has social media trivialised people's lives? Are people's lives ever trivial?
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I wrote about one of the things I find most depressing about modern society: the way it rewards the boring and punishes the eccentric
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I wrote about how so much of modern life is dedicated to the obsessive avoidance of suffering. We risk forgetting that suffering is one of the deepest and most important aspects of the human condition
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Its the shortest day of the year which inspired one of the most beautiful and mysterious poems in the English language: Donne's Noturnal Upon St Lucy's Day
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I wrote this about how modern life and work are arranged to make it impossible to think properly
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I wrote this about how tweeness became the establishment style
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I wrote this about my adolescent antipathy to football and my later realisation that disliking things doesn't make you an interesting person
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I'm writing about bibliomania. Are you obsessed with books and owning them? Why?
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I wrote this about how British culture is obsessed with trivia and gossip because the big problems are so frightening
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Decided to step back from Twitter because it's depressing so started playing Words with Friends instead and being being shredded at scrabble by midwestern grandmothers called Sylvia with insanely developed vocabularies is so much more brutal.
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The more I think about the book the more it makes me wonder about the future of the monarchy - how long is forcing people to enter a life-long and potentially life-destroying media gameshow against their will via genetic lottery going to be a viable way to have a head of state?
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Raskolnikov's dream from the end of Crime and Punishment. One of the most amazing bits of the novel and feels terrifyingly prophetic somehow...
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This history of meritocracy is the most interesting non-fiction book I've read this year. And a frightening account of our present elite whose vast wealth guarantees them academic and professional success - which they then take as proof of their moral and intellectual superiority
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I profiled culture war vicar Calvin Robinson
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Just connected to the sound system at friend’s house with Bluetooth — its name shows up as “Bercow” because it’s the house speaker
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I wrote this about Elon Musk, Twitter and why we don't need a "digital town square". Democracies benefit when citizens are ignorant of each other's lunatic views.
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Really pleased to be shortlisted in the comment journalism category at The British Journalism Awards!
@tombesleyfilm
@HenryWaterfall
@bendepear
@andrea_danese
@Channel4
@samanthajbooth
@SchoolsWeek
@tessa5news
@Katie5news
@Christina5News
@CallenderDevron
@5_News
@Karin_Goodwin
@tomiwa_
@halinarifai
@FerretScot
@tommyjessop
@vjbnoble
@TomStoneUK
@BBCPanorama
@GregMcTweets
@meisel_anna
@CarlJohnston2
@BBCRadio4
@ASE
@VanBowles
@BettinaWaked
@timawford
@rosiepelican
@muskhalili
@BBCNews
@mwolferobinson
@josephharker
@jonathanshainin
Comment Journalism finalists:
@ianbirrell
@theipaper
@WilliamJHague
@thetimes
@mattholehouse
@TheEconomist
@MarinaHyde
@guardian
@j_amesmarriott
@thetimes
@janem
@TheSun
@piersmorgan
@TheSun
@robertshrimsley
@FT
#BJA2023
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I'm compiling a list of the best novels about love. What books should be on it? Apart from the obvious classics like Jane Austen and obviously every novel by Iris Murdoch.
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I wrote about how intelligence came to assume a place of central importance in our society and how for many people academic achievement has become a shorthand for your total value as a person
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I wrote this about the terrible British weakness for performances of fusty establishment learning
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I wrote this about the housing crisis and the destruction of a whole generation's optimism about the future
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My dad has finally worked out how to comment on my Times articles which he is now doing in his own inimitable style.
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Why does this coffee look like the next Sally Rooney novel
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I wrote this — an attempt to say something about why I love Philip Larkin so much
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Twitter algorithm really hammering Biden's messsage home for him here
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I hated my smartphone and how much time I spent on it so I got rid of it. It's actually been brilliant and not nearly as difficult or inconvenient as I thought. (My Nokia is much smaller than the one in the embarassing photoshoot).
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Because the US market is so religious books are often sold totally differently there. New Tom Holland is a case in point.
UK: Little picture of the shard
US: GIANT CRUCIFIX
UK subtitle: The Making of the Western Mind
US subtitle: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World
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Somewhere on the staff of Mail Online a frustrated poet is being forced to churn out copy about Kim Jong Un’s armoured train
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I wrote about the collapse of home ownership among young people. It's not just a millennial problem, it's a disaster for society.
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@ImogenWK
I have an old school friend who has become exactly this man - every detail you mentioned! He recently published his debut fantasy novel which I think fits
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Accidentally scrolled far enough back through my emails to get to the time I sent the LRB one of my undergraduate essays which I generously suggested they might want to publish. ... And in one stroke the years I spent repressing that shameful memory are undone.
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I interviewed Jeremy Paxman who called me an imbecile and talked about his hair
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Thought this was cool: there are no chickens in the Iliad because they didn’t arrive in Europe until 500BC.
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Hosting a dinner party for the first time in my life. Got so carried away I wrote an FAQ for it which I like to think covers all eventualities.
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I wrote about what I considered an incredibly successful dinner party only for it to be headlined "How not to host a dinner party"
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I wrote this, about how on the internet we live in the glare of an eternal present, condemned never to forget and never to be forgotten
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I wrote this, on the curse of celebrity novelists, celebrity podcasters and the "influencer-isation of everything".
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“I, a very clever person, once spoke to somebody I consider much stupider than me”
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Pretty invaluable advice about how to approach and understand other people's ideas - from Bryan Magee's Confessions of a Philosopher
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I was also struck by how many raised the problem of declining attention spans meaning long classic novels are falling off the syllabus at many universities
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If a bildungsroman is a novel about young people experiencing their formative years why don't middle-aged people get their own literary genre?
It could be called: *the baldungsroman*.
I am probably too proud of this.
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I wrote this about how the internet is dividing the west between English speakers whose online lives are carried our amidst the din of America's culture wars and non-English speakers whose connection to American madness is much weaker
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Back in the office for a day. God I feel important ... striding around with a flat white ... sending emails ... going to pret. I'm a master of the universe like in Bonfire of the Vanities
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