A tradition of fine writing is on the way out – and that may not be a bad thing

I know it’s absurd, I know it’s juvenile, I know that awards ceremonies are perfectly ludicrous occasions for everyone except the winners and their mothers, but I am what I am, competitive, and there’s no point pretending otherwise.

I know it’s absurd, I know it’s juvenile, I know that awards ceremonies are perfectly ludicrous occasions for everyone except the winners and their mothers, but I am what I am, competitive, and there’s no point pretending otherwise.

So I will not pretend that receiving the Best Columnist award at the Society of Editors Press Awards dinner at the Savoy last week was anything less than heavenly. But there are other things there’s no point pretending. I’m not actually the best columnist: there are plenty, not least on my own paper, to equal or surpass me; and a few in Fleet Street who are indisputably better. Simon Jenkins on the Sunday Times and Guardian is the best — has been for years.