Lionel Shriver joins The Spectator as a regular columnist, starting this week

We at The Spectator are delighted to announce that Lionel Shriver is joining us as a columnist. As regular readers will know, she has written a few diaries for us and is one of the very best writers on either side of the Atlantic. She’s a hugely successful novelist but what marks her out as a journalist is her understanding of the currents of life and politics. Her writing has all of the qualities that Spectator readers most admire: originality of thought, elegance of expression, independence of opinion. Her first piece is a brilliant evisceration of the movement against historical statues. All of us in 22 Old Queen Street are thrilled that her new column starts this week: she will alternate with Matthew Parris.

Kingsley Amis once said of The Spectator that it might have just 64 pages but it offers more to read than a newspaper several times its size. With Lionel Shriver joining a list of writers that includes Rod Liddle, Charles Moore, Mary Wakefield – and others too numerous to mention – The Spectator also offers the finest stable of columnists to be found in any weekly.