Harry De

Monday

Harry De

Three cheers for generalism — why James Delingpole is wrong about web journalism

From our UK edition

I yearn for expertise, in the way that only an arts graduate can. At university I learned how to read books (as long as they were written in English). But now, two decades on, people who can read books (as long as they are written in English) are not quite such the hot ticket that they used to be. It's an outrage. No wonder I envy those who have honed and sharpened their talent, rapier-like, into something that can be wielded usefully in life. What good will my dim recollection of sonnet form do me? The people I particularly admire are those who have set their heart on some really specific skill and put in the hard yards. Microbiologists, say. I look up to them in the way that small boys look up to fathers who know how to tie 18 different kinds of knot.

Thursday

Harry De

Bringing obituaries to life

From our UK edition

I used to be a foreign correspondent. Sometimes I thought it was a pretty glamorous job. At dinner parties I might occasionally drop hints about the dangerous sorts of places I had been to. But the only people who cared were other foreign correspondents, and then only because they were eager to dwarf my boasts with their own tales of derring-do. To my youthful indignation, nobody else gave a hoot. Now I am the obituaries editor at the Telegraph. Quite a career shift, I’m prepared to admit. These days if people ask what I do I tend to mumble something about being a journalist. But this, I’m afraid to say, is not because I am now wiser and less vain.