Rupert Murdoch has nothing to fear from me

Harvard man Russell Seitz has sent me an extraordinary present as an object lesson in ‘what a magazine should be in case you start another one’. The paper has yellowed and is dog-eared, pages are falling out and the print is faint. But the Transatlantic Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, dated January 1924, is a joy to behold. Mind you, we were already almost 100 years old when Ford Madox Ford first edited TTR in Paris. And that’s what I told my friend Russell.

Anyone who writes for or reads The Spectator is not likely to be impressed by other publications, but this does not include a posturing peacock from the BBC who recently spouted gibberish learned at university diversity courses at a Speccie reader. I bring up those dreaded three letters because Jeremy Clarkson has just written in his Sunday Times column about how he was prevented from entering a studio at the BBC – while employed by the corporation – because he was carrying a copy of The Spectator under his arm.