Supping With The Devils

by Hugo Young

Book by Young, Hugo

Genres: Nonfiction, Journalism, Politics

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Hugo John Smelter Young was a British journalist and columnist and senior political commentator at The Guardian.

Reviews

[Sally · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hugo Young was a wonderful journalist - one of the great political journalists. He died in 2003 and in the decade since I have often wished I could read his take on the way things have developed.

He was left wing and liberal but not blindly partisan; he was astute, witty and a joy to read.

This collection of his columns is a wonderful memorial to a great columnist and showcases him at his most perceptive. The edition I read was the posthumous revision, with the addition of some of his final columns. In his final six months, when he knew time was short, he was at his most incisive and pulled no punches. Blunkett and Blair were skewered and Young's anger drips from the page.

Recommended.

[Titus Hjelm · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the title says, covers The Guardian's (and others') columnist Hugo Young's political writing from the Thatcher era to the early 2000s. Although a left liberal in many ways, Young didn't save his words about Labour's follies and was especially critical of what could be said to be the 'Americanisation' of New Labour. If you want a sense of the British political system, read an academic introduction for the plain 'facts', then read this. It's like having a long interview with an insider that brings the system alive.