The website of James Harkin, author of Niche, Cyburbia and Big Ideas
It is just past noon, and I am sitting at one of the best tables in one of London’s most sought-after restaurants – The Wolseley, where reservations need to be made weeks in advance – neatly decked out in an … Continue reading
Thomas L. Friedman is a writer in a hurry. He has arrived 15 minutes late for our lunch, and strides right past the fussing restaurant staff to shake my hand and sit down. Making up for lost time, he flicks … Continue reading
On December 20 last year, a Boeing 737 preparing for take-off in Colorado skidded off the runway, tumbled into a ravine and injured 38 people. Just moments after the accident, while his fellow passengers sat reflecting on their good fortune … Continue reading
This nudging stuff is nothing new – and it’s all a bit shaky The Guardian, Comment pages, 5 August 2008. Just like the wicked, there is going to be no rest for Conservative MPs this summer. Courtesy of David Cameron, … Continue reading
What does it mean to be a “libertarian paternalist” or a “transhumanist”? What is it like to live in an “experience economy”? When people murmur knowingly about something called “the wisdom of crowds”, what are they talking about? Is there … Continue reading
How much should one tip a prostitute? Dylan Jones, the editor of GQ and energetic man-about-town, is here to tell you the right thing to do. His book, Mr Jones’ Rules For the Modern Man, touts itself as a kind … Continue reading
Last week, as it does every year, Europe Day fell on May 9, marking the day in 1950 when Robert Schuman presented his suggestion for a united Europe. Few people, bar those employees of the European Commission in Brussels who … Continue reading
On Thursday March 16, in the first major restatement of its national security strategy for nearly four years, the White House identified Iran as the single greatest danger to US interests. In the same announcement, the US government reiterated its … Continue reading
Seven years ago, a skinny American political theorist called Barry Schwartz strolled into The Gap in search of a new pair of jeans. It took more time than he had bargained for. Schwartz had committed the cardinal error of entering … Continue reading
The eight tourists killed in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest would, according to the travel writer Jan Morris, have been well aware of the dangers of their journey into ‘the darkest heart of Africa’. Ken Wiwa offered a radically different interpretation … Continue reading
Read it here
My comment piece, which was in last thursday’s Guardian. Read it here
Read it here
Read it here
Here
Read it here.
With me and some other talking heads; watch it here
Was on Today programme this morning, arguing with the charming and usually pretty good Tory culture secretary Jeremy Hunt about the internet. About three years later than everyone else, including the magician Derren Brown and an amateur league team from … Continue reading
When, at the beginning of November, the Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw delivered a speech to rally New Labour’s “luvvies” to the defence of the arts, he omitted to mention that there has been a recent dwindling of their ranks. For … Continue reading
Read it here.
Snark, by David Denby Picador, £9.99 Gordon Brown’s former special adviser Damian McBride wouldn’t have known it, but those innuendo-laden emails he sent around about the Tory leadership were textbook snark. There was something ethically snarky about the surreptitious video … Continue reading
Year 10: It’s 8am on Wednesday morning, and Half-wit has been called to the diary room. The news is not good. After the initial novelty, he is informed by the anonymous interlocutor, the public has grown weary of his antics … Continue reading
Read it here. Will be in conversation with Dominique Moisi at Edinburgh Books Festival on Thursday 27th at 330pm.
In the Spring of 2006, a trainee teacher and single mum called Stacy Snyder was summoned by Millersville University in Pennsylvania and informed that, despite having passed all her coursework and earned all her credits, they were not going to … Continue reading
So the wise old lion has roared again. Rupert Murdoch has threatened the orthodoxy and offered a possible lifeline to the struggling newspaper industry by declaring that his titles will start charging for online content. But how did anyone seriously … Continue reading