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Guardian Angel: My Journey from Leftism to Sanity
Guardian Angel is that rare memoir that grabs you by the shoulders with an urgency that screams, “PAY ATTENTION!” It leaps off the page with an immediacy and relevance that few books achieve.
Beginning with her solitary childhood in London, it took years for Melanie Phillips to understand her parents’ emotional frailties and even longer to escape from them. But Phillips inherited her family’s strong Jewish values and a passionate commitment to freedom from oppression. It was this moral foundation that ultimately turned her against the warped and tyrannical attitudes of the Left, requiring her to break away not only from her parents—but also from the people she had seen as her wider political family.
Through her poignant story of transformation and separation, we gain insight into the political uproar that has engulfed the West. Britain’s vote to leave the EU, the rise of far-Right political parties in Europe, and the stunning election of US president Donald Trump all involve a revolt against the elites by millions. It is these disdained masses who have been championed by Melanie Phillips in a career as prescient as it has been provocative.
Guardian Angel is not only an affecting personal story, but it provides a vital explanation why the West is at a critical crossroads today.
“Melanie Phillips has been one of the brave and necessary voices of our time, unafraid to speak the language of moral responsibility in an age of obfuscation and denial. This searing account of her personal journey is compelling testimony to her courage in speaking truth to power.”—Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
Beginning with her solitary childhood in London, it took years for Melanie Phillips to understand her parents’ emotional frailties and even longer to escape from them. But Phillips inherited her family’s strong Jewish values and a passionate commitment to freedom from oppression. It was this moral foundation that ultimately turned her against the warped and tyrannical attitudes of the Left, requiring her to break away not only from her parents—but also from the people she had seen as her wider political family.
Through her poignant story of transformation and separation, we gain insight into the political uproar that has engulfed the West. Britain’s vote to leave the EU, the rise of far-Right political parties in Europe, and the stunning election of US president Donald Trump all involve a revolt against the elites by millions. It is these disdained masses who have been championed by Melanie Phillips in a career as prescient as it has been provocative.
Guardian Angel is not only an affecting personal story, but it provides a vital explanation why the West is at a critical crossroads today.
“Melanie Phillips has been one of the brave and necessary voices of our time, unafraid to speak the language of moral responsibility in an age of obfuscation and denial. This searing account of her personal journey is compelling testimony to her courage in speaking truth to power.”—Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
159 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 1, 2013
About the author
Melanie Phillips
35 books176 followersMelanie Phillips, journalist, broadcaster and author, is Britain’s best known and most controversial champion of traditional values in the culture war.
Her weekly column, which currently appears in The Times of London, has been published over the years in the Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times and Daily Mail. She also writes for the Jerusalem Post and Jewish Chronicle, is a regular panellist on BBC Radio's The Moral Maze and speaks on public platforms throughout the English-speaking world.
Her best-selling book Londonistan, about the British establishment's capitulation to Islamist aggression, was published in 2006. She followed this in 2010 with The World Turned Upside Down: the Global Battle over God, Truth and Power.
Her first novel, The Legacy, which deals with conflicted Jewish identity, antisemitism and the power of history, was published in April by Post Hill Press. Her personal and political memoir, Guardian Angel, was published by Post Hill Press in January.
Among her earlier books is All Must Have Prizes, a devastating critique of Britain's education system. She is also the author of The Sex-Change Society: Feminised Britain and the Neutered Male, published by the Social Market Foundation, America's Social Revolution, published by Civitas, and The Ascent of Woman, a history of the ideas behind the female suffrage campaign, published by Little, Brown. She also wrote a play, Traitors, which was performed at the Drill Hall in London in 1985
Her weekly column, which currently appears in The Times of London, has been published over the years in the Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times and Daily Mail. She also writes for the Jerusalem Post and Jewish Chronicle, is a regular panellist on BBC Radio's The Moral Maze and speaks on public platforms throughout the English-speaking world.
Her best-selling book Londonistan, about the British establishment's capitulation to Islamist aggression, was published in 2006. She followed this in 2010 with The World Turned Upside Down: the Global Battle over God, Truth and Power.
Her first novel, The Legacy, which deals with conflicted Jewish identity, antisemitism and the power of history, was published in April by Post Hill Press. Her personal and political memoir, Guardian Angel, was published by Post Hill Press in January.
Among her earlier books is All Must Have Prizes, a devastating critique of Britain's education system. She is also the author of The Sex-Change Society: Feminised Britain and the Neutered Male, published by the Social Market Foundation, America's Social Revolution, published by Civitas, and The Ascent of Woman, a history of the ideas behind the female suffrage campaign, published by Little, Brown. She also wrote a play, Traitors, which was performed at the Drill Hall in London in 1985
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
June 21, 2024
💫An extraordinary and heartfelt memoir, including a spirited defense of Western values, as she explains her exit from left wing ideology and dogma to a more centrist set of beliefs.
It is an astonishing recitation of a journey towards a more thorough honesty in her life and vocation and a startling reminder that movements we support and favor are just as capable of elevating ideology over truthfulness and reality as those we oppose.
💫 Immensely understandable to any of us who have altered our ideas and beliefs only to incur the wrath and spite of men and women who refuse to allow us the freedom to change our minds.
It is an astonishing recitation of a journey towards a more thorough honesty in her life and vocation and a startling reminder that movements we support and favor are just as capable of elevating ideology over truthfulness and reality as those we oppose.
💫 Immensely understandable to any of us who have altered our ideas and beliefs only to incur the wrath and spite of men and women who refuse to allow us the freedom to change our minds.
May 3, 2014
Guardian Angel is an autobiography penned by Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips. In an interesting conceptual move away from the traditional autobiography, it is focussed on only two aspects of her life: her changing relationship with her parents, and her political shift from writing for the left-wing Guardian to the right-wing Daily Mail. As it happens, I think that’s a pretty good concept. The way in which relationships with parents change over the course of a lifetime is a deeply personal yet universal topic, while the political shift is perhaps the most interesting public aspect of Phillips’s life.
If this book was fiction, it would quickly become a literary classic. It would be a tragicomic character study worthy of Ricky Gervais, but with a subtlety in the detail revealing the flawed perspective of the narrator worthy of any classic author. It would represent a fusion of the tools and techniques of some of literature’s greatest works with a modern storyline and sensibility. I, for one, would be raving about it. And so, perhaps I should review it in those terms.
The narrator has a virtually messianic opinion of herself, which lends itself readily to the tragicomic form. The book opens with the narrator grandly describing herself in the third person:
The child lay tensely in the darkness, in a bed that was not her own. A crisis had placed her there, and impending and unimaginable horror which only one person could prevent.
The “unimaginable horror” turns out to be the death of the child’s aunt: no doubt a tragic event, but hardly “unimaginable”. This third person drama continues for some time, before the predictable, but no less comically dramatic, dénouement of the opening passage:
I was that child.
This is a very effective opening to a character study. In a few hundred words, it gives the measure of the narrator, especially her propensity for hyperbole and drama, and the third person narrative structure strikes a strong note of ego. The tendency towards dramatic hyperbole is reinforced early on. The narrator describes her childhood dislike for her paternal grandmother’s “grim slum” – which she also, somewhat inconsistently, describes as a “fine Georgian terrace”. The narrator describes the house’s oval windows, and – such was her dislike for the property –
to this day I cannot look at upright oval shapes … without my heart lurching, absurdly, into my mouth.
The monstrous ego of the character is infused throughout the text, though is perhaps most obviously reinforced by two passages: one, which is far too long to quote, in which she lists a number of perceived personal insults from other journalists (as distinct from multiple passages in which she lists criticisms of her work); and another, in which she describes the magnitude of her level of understanding of “Middle Britain”.
There are issues on which the Mail and I do not agree. I myself seemed to have an umbilical cord to Middle Britain.
Another exemplary passage is this:
Without wishing to sound boastful, I believe that on issue after issues where the evidence is now finally in, I have been proved right.
This latter passage is made more amusing by her citation of global warming as an issue “where the evidence is now finally in”; evidence which, apparently, confirms her view that man-made global warming is a oil-company perpetuated “scam which has hoodwinked millions and cost billions”. Hence, the narrator is comprehensively established as unreliable, egotistical and deeply flawed.
This characterisation groundwork is quite crucial, as the opinions described by the narrator as her own offer a crescendo of offence. Had the character not already been established as a tragicomic creation, the humour in the illogic of the offerings would be overshadowed by the level of offence they contain.
Given the concentration of the book on her own relationship with her parents, it is unsurprising that the narrator proselytises extensively about family structures. There is considerable depth about her own difficult relationship with her father, which she claims inflicted “lifelong harm”. Her father was present, but disengaged. From this, the narrator draws the illogical conclusion that divorce is harmful to children. I hardly need point out that divorce and remarriage in her case may well have equipped the narrator with the strong father-figure she claims to have lacked, where a refusal to divorce removes this possibility. In common with the opinions expressed in the rest of the book, an initial expression of dissatisfaction with the state of “modern Britain” builds to a climax of breathtaking offensiveness.
In this case, the narrator is both “perplexed” and “appalled” by the simple statement of fact that there are circumstances in which it is acceptable for a mother to leave her husband, and thus become a single parent,
and more, that it is her ‘right’ to choose such a lifestyle.
Indeed, the narrator goes on to later describe divorcees and children born out of wedlock as “deviants”, despite undermining even the technical definition of the word by quoting statistics showing that almost half of British marriages end in divorce. Yet, simultaneously, the narrator claims not to be “judging individuals”.
With similar illogic, the narrator accuses the BBC of racism for considering the needs of “Asian and African-Carribbean audiences”, and – with particular poignancy given the publisher of this book – that mainstream publishers will not publish her work because it is too factually correct.
Hopefully, I have now given you a flavour of the structure of the book, and perhaps some sense of the way in which the layers of tragedy, comedy and farce interplay in a cohesive and rather engaging way. Yet there are two other layers to this work which raise it above the level of its peers.
The first of these two additions is the peppering of one-liners which encapsulate all three elements of the main narrative. Most of these are difficult to quote in a review, as they are heavily dependent on some length of preceding material, yet I shall try to give a flavour. There is a long section in which the narrator describes the negative reaction to one of her earlier books, in which she proposed sweeping changes to the British system of education. She then extensively quotes criticism of this work. In response to other writers’ accusations that her proposals went against research evidence, she writes:
So all the teachers, educational psychologists, government inspectors … parents and pupils to whom I had spoken were not evidence, merely ‘anecdote’
To end a defensive rant against her critics with a statement of such profound bathos is, surely, comic genius.
The second exalting addition is the rich vein of unjust persecution running through the book. This juxtaposes the narrators abhorrent opinions with her own sense of persecution at the hands of others. There is one profoundly brilliant passage in which, in the context of her views on Israel, she claims
I could never relax when turning on the radio or TV, opening a newspaper or going to a dinner party, for fear of hearing some libellous accusation or other casual prejudice
The remarkable device of having this narrator complain about casual prejudice demonstrates the lack of insight possessed by the character in an exceptionally clever and highly amusing manner. This point is further emphasised by the inconsistency of opinion presented. Towards the end of her book, she claims
In my view, polarised thinking represents precisely the problem that no so bedevils politics in the UK and America. The left/right argument, which forecloses any balanced approach, simply wipes out any political space on which people can meet and discuss issues on the basis of reasoned debate rather than ideological name-calling.
It is hard to suppress a smile as the character is revealed as a brazen hypocrite, as she herself engages in something close to ideological name-calling:
The left is not on the side of truth, reason, and justice, but instead promotes ideology, malice, and oppression. Rather than fighting the abuse of power, it embodies it.
Of course, the problem with this interpretation of the book is that it is not fiction. This is a book written by one of Britain’s best-paid newspaper columnist, who credibly claims to have the ear of government. Her Gordian knot of inconsistent opinion, pseudo-mortality, and prejudice is what passes for sociopolitical commentary in one of the country’s best-selling and most influential newspapers.
There is some undeniable literary quality to this book, but only when judged beyond its own terms. Within its own terms – that is, as a non-fiction piece – it contains such odious opinions, repulsive arguments and factual distortions that I struggle to believe that it can represent the views of its well-educated author. It feels like it might be pandering of the worst kind, content written purely to falsely reinforce inaccurate prejudices.
As it seems only fair for my “star rating” to judge the book on its own terms, I’ve given it the minimum rating – one star – but hope that doesn’t detract from the qualities that this book does, albeit unintentionally, offer.
Note: This review was originally published on Simon Howard's blog. You can view it at http://sjhoward.co.uk/archive/2013/07....
If this book was fiction, it would quickly become a literary classic. It would be a tragicomic character study worthy of Ricky Gervais, but with a subtlety in the detail revealing the flawed perspective of the narrator worthy of any classic author. It would represent a fusion of the tools and techniques of some of literature’s greatest works with a modern storyline and sensibility. I, for one, would be raving about it. And so, perhaps I should review it in those terms.
The narrator has a virtually messianic opinion of herself, which lends itself readily to the tragicomic form. The book opens with the narrator grandly describing herself in the third person:
The child lay tensely in the darkness, in a bed that was not her own. A crisis had placed her there, and impending and unimaginable horror which only one person could prevent.
The “unimaginable horror” turns out to be the death of the child’s aunt: no doubt a tragic event, but hardly “unimaginable”. This third person drama continues for some time, before the predictable, but no less comically dramatic, dénouement of the opening passage:
I was that child.
This is a very effective opening to a character study. In a few hundred words, it gives the measure of the narrator, especially her propensity for hyperbole and drama, and the third person narrative structure strikes a strong note of ego. The tendency towards dramatic hyperbole is reinforced early on. The narrator describes her childhood dislike for her paternal grandmother’s “grim slum” – which she also, somewhat inconsistently, describes as a “fine Georgian terrace”. The narrator describes the house’s oval windows, and – such was her dislike for the property –
to this day I cannot look at upright oval shapes … without my heart lurching, absurdly, into my mouth.
The monstrous ego of the character is infused throughout the text, though is perhaps most obviously reinforced by two passages: one, which is far too long to quote, in which she lists a number of perceived personal insults from other journalists (as distinct from multiple passages in which she lists criticisms of her work); and another, in which she describes the magnitude of her level of understanding of “Middle Britain”.
There are issues on which the Mail and I do not agree. I myself seemed to have an umbilical cord to Middle Britain.
Another exemplary passage is this:
Without wishing to sound boastful, I believe that on issue after issues where the evidence is now finally in, I have been proved right.
This latter passage is made more amusing by her citation of global warming as an issue “where the evidence is now finally in”; evidence which, apparently, confirms her view that man-made global warming is a oil-company perpetuated “scam which has hoodwinked millions and cost billions”. Hence, the narrator is comprehensively established as unreliable, egotistical and deeply flawed.
This characterisation groundwork is quite crucial, as the opinions described by the narrator as her own offer a crescendo of offence. Had the character not already been established as a tragicomic creation, the humour in the illogic of the offerings would be overshadowed by the level of offence they contain.
Given the concentration of the book on her own relationship with her parents, it is unsurprising that the narrator proselytises extensively about family structures. There is considerable depth about her own difficult relationship with her father, which she claims inflicted “lifelong harm”. Her father was present, but disengaged. From this, the narrator draws the illogical conclusion that divorce is harmful to children. I hardly need point out that divorce and remarriage in her case may well have equipped the narrator with the strong father-figure she claims to have lacked, where a refusal to divorce removes this possibility. In common with the opinions expressed in the rest of the book, an initial expression of dissatisfaction with the state of “modern Britain” builds to a climax of breathtaking offensiveness.
In this case, the narrator is both “perplexed” and “appalled” by the simple statement of fact that there are circumstances in which it is acceptable for a mother to leave her husband, and thus become a single parent,
and more, that it is her ‘right’ to choose such a lifestyle.
Indeed, the narrator goes on to later describe divorcees and children born out of wedlock as “deviants”, despite undermining even the technical definition of the word by quoting statistics showing that almost half of British marriages end in divorce. Yet, simultaneously, the narrator claims not to be “judging individuals”.
With similar illogic, the narrator accuses the BBC of racism for considering the needs of “Asian and African-Carribbean audiences”, and – with particular poignancy given the publisher of this book – that mainstream publishers will not publish her work because it is too factually correct.
Hopefully, I have now given you a flavour of the structure of the book, and perhaps some sense of the way in which the layers of tragedy, comedy and farce interplay in a cohesive and rather engaging way. Yet there are two other layers to this work which raise it above the level of its peers.
The first of these two additions is the peppering of one-liners which encapsulate all three elements of the main narrative. Most of these are difficult to quote in a review, as they are heavily dependent on some length of preceding material, yet I shall try to give a flavour. There is a long section in which the narrator describes the negative reaction to one of her earlier books, in which she proposed sweeping changes to the British system of education. She then extensively quotes criticism of this work. In response to other writers’ accusations that her proposals went against research evidence, she writes:
So all the teachers, educational psychologists, government inspectors … parents and pupils to whom I had spoken were not evidence, merely ‘anecdote’
To end a defensive rant against her critics with a statement of such profound bathos is, surely, comic genius.
The second exalting addition is the rich vein of unjust persecution running through the book. This juxtaposes the narrators abhorrent opinions with her own sense of persecution at the hands of others. There is one profoundly brilliant passage in which, in the context of her views on Israel, she claims
I could never relax when turning on the radio or TV, opening a newspaper or going to a dinner party, for fear of hearing some libellous accusation or other casual prejudice
The remarkable device of having this narrator complain about casual prejudice demonstrates the lack of insight possessed by the character in an exceptionally clever and highly amusing manner. This point is further emphasised by the inconsistency of opinion presented. Towards the end of her book, she claims
In my view, polarised thinking represents precisely the problem that no so bedevils politics in the UK and America. The left/right argument, which forecloses any balanced approach, simply wipes out any political space on which people can meet and discuss issues on the basis of reasoned debate rather than ideological name-calling.
It is hard to suppress a smile as the character is revealed as a brazen hypocrite, as she herself engages in something close to ideological name-calling:
The left is not on the side of truth, reason, and justice, but instead promotes ideology, malice, and oppression. Rather than fighting the abuse of power, it embodies it.
Of course, the problem with this interpretation of the book is that it is not fiction. This is a book written by one of Britain’s best-paid newspaper columnist, who credibly claims to have the ear of government. Her Gordian knot of inconsistent opinion, pseudo-mortality, and prejudice is what passes for sociopolitical commentary in one of the country’s best-selling and most influential newspapers.
There is some undeniable literary quality to this book, but only when judged beyond its own terms. Within its own terms – that is, as a non-fiction piece – it contains such odious opinions, repulsive arguments and factual distortions that I struggle to believe that it can represent the views of its well-educated author. It feels like it might be pandering of the worst kind, content written purely to falsely reinforce inaccurate prejudices.
As it seems only fair for my “star rating” to judge the book on its own terms, I’ve given it the minimum rating – one star – but hope that doesn’t detract from the qualities that this book does, albeit unintentionally, offer.
Note: This review was originally published on Simon Howard's blog. You can view it at http://sjhoward.co.uk/archive/2013/07....
June 10, 2013
To be honest, I have not knowingly read any articles by British journalist Melanie Phillips, either in The Guardian, the Observer or the Daily Mail, so I was interested to see what she had to say in her memoir, Guardian Angel.
It begins with a chapter about her early life, which personally, I think was a traumatic experience which has probably had an enormous impact on her whole life and career. She was the only child of a Jewish couple, Alfred and Mabel and grew up knowing - rightly or wrongly - that she was responsible for her mother’s ill health. She felt that if she did anything wrong and caused displeasure, it was likely to kill her mother. What a terrible weight to carry around with you as you grow up! To add to that was the fact that her father was too weak to stand up for his child - he may as well have been physically absent from the family home. As she grew older, she managed to cover up her insecurities and present a confident, determined demeanour.
We go on to learn that after obtaining a degree, Melanie chose journalism as a career, quickly moving from a lesser known, out-of-town paper, to the Guardian. At first, she fitted in very well and was happy there, but as time went by, her political views began to conflict with the prevailing opinions. She came from a background which supported the left, but felt she had to move her political stance over time.
Her articles and opinions became more and more contentious, whether she was writing about the state of education, the welfare state, single parent families in this country, or the rise of what she perceived to be anti-Jewish and anti- Israel feeling, especially after the terrorist attacks in New York in 2001.
There was a certain amount of content that I agreed with and which I’ve been thinking about for a long time: how much can we trust our politicians and journalists to tell the truth? Do they “follow where the evidence leads”? What is the evidence that reports and recommendations are based upon? I found the book to be an interesting and thought-provoking read, but one which you need to approach with an open mind. There are many more issues raised in Melanie Phillips’ short memoir, but I will allow her the last words in this review:
“I am simply Alfred and Mabel’s daughter - a Jew who believes in the repair of the world, and a journalist who believes in speaking truth to power.”
I received this free of charge in return for an honest review.
It begins with a chapter about her early life, which personally, I think was a traumatic experience which has probably had an enormous impact on her whole life and career. She was the only child of a Jewish couple, Alfred and Mabel and grew up knowing - rightly or wrongly - that she was responsible for her mother’s ill health. She felt that if she did anything wrong and caused displeasure, it was likely to kill her mother. What a terrible weight to carry around with you as you grow up! To add to that was the fact that her father was too weak to stand up for his child - he may as well have been physically absent from the family home. As she grew older, she managed to cover up her insecurities and present a confident, determined demeanour.
We go on to learn that after obtaining a degree, Melanie chose journalism as a career, quickly moving from a lesser known, out-of-town paper, to the Guardian. At first, she fitted in very well and was happy there, but as time went by, her political views began to conflict with the prevailing opinions. She came from a background which supported the left, but felt she had to move her political stance over time.
Her articles and opinions became more and more contentious, whether she was writing about the state of education, the welfare state, single parent families in this country, or the rise of what she perceived to be anti-Jewish and anti- Israel feeling, especially after the terrorist attacks in New York in 2001.
There was a certain amount of content that I agreed with and which I’ve been thinking about for a long time: how much can we trust our politicians and journalists to tell the truth? Do they “follow where the evidence leads”? What is the evidence that reports and recommendations are based upon? I found the book to be an interesting and thought-provoking read, but one which you need to approach with an open mind. There are many more issues raised in Melanie Phillips’ short memoir, but I will allow her the last words in this review:
“I am simply Alfred and Mabel’s daughter - a Jew who believes in the repair of the world, and a journalist who believes in speaking truth to power.”
I received this free of charge in return for an honest review.
June 19, 2018
While my American Jewish background was very different from Ms. Phillips’, our political educations were very similar.
In 1968 (a half century ago! Yikes!!) while in graduate school at the University of Michigan (one of the epicenters of the New Left) i roomed in a House with two die-hard New Left activists.
Both belonged to the SDS, and when it imploded in the spring, they migrated to a violent splinter (not the Weathermen). As this coincided with the end of the term, thru moved away and I never heard of them again.
But what they spouted came increasingly to the fore, culminating in the imbalanced policies I saw in both the Clinton and Obama administrations.
I cannot say I agree with every position Melanie Phillips espouses, but she is one articulate and gutsy commentator we best not ignore!
In 1968 (a half century ago! Yikes!!) while in graduate school at the University of Michigan (one of the epicenters of the New Left) i roomed in a House with two die-hard New Left activists.
Both belonged to the SDS, and when it imploded in the spring, they migrated to a violent splinter (not the Weathermen). As this coincided with the end of the term, thru moved away and I never heard of them again.
But what they spouted came increasingly to the fore, culminating in the imbalanced policies I saw in both the Clinton and Obama administrations.
I cannot say I agree with every position Melanie Phillips espouses, but she is one articulate and gutsy commentator we best not ignore!
May 26, 2017
In a world where "fake news" has become a slogan, we do not need many reminders about the political polarization of news. However, this book describes the inner world of both a journalist and a leftist, and laments the enormous pressures placed on those in that position. A fascinating, if depressing, read.
May 24, 2013
This is a revealing memoir of a troubled childhood and a love-hate relationship with the left in Britain by a journalist, author.
From the Guardian newspaper: Whatever would Melanie Phillips have done without the left? It has been her life's work to fight this many-headed hydra, hacking away tirelessly at its trendy teaching methods and loose morals and kooky environmentalism. But more than that, the heroic Phillips story depends not just on her vilification by the left but on leftwingers' supposed fury that she was once one of them. A martyr needs something to renounce, after all.
Her rupture with the left is rich polemical territory, and Phillips has explored it before. But with the publication of her memoir – a first venture from her new epublishing company – this time it's personal, and compellingly so.
Phillips was an only child, and she walked on eggshells. Her adored mother, Mabel, had had a nervous breakdown in her teens and remained mentally fragile, with obsessive-compulsive tendencies: theirs was a claustrophobic relationship, with the young Melanie convinced that "it would destroy her if I ever made her upset", and that she must always be unimpeachably good.
The chapter on her early childhood opens in the third person, as if such trauma could only be observed at a safe distance: the writing is melodramatic, yet the dread feels real. We see an anxious child raised to think of life in apocalyptic terms, never more than one mistake away from the mother's descent into darkness. When Phillips describes Mabel's compulsive handwashing as a strategy to "make the world an orderly place under her control, to stop it from disintegrating", it's tempting to draw parallels with the daughter's lifelong mission against moral and social collapse.
Her father, meanwhile, is portrayed as a disappointment. Albert Phillips died without savings in a rented flat, his daughter writes bitterly, having failed to do what "most other" poor Jews did and escape the East End for suburbia. For that, she blames his staunch socialist belief that workers don't aspire to the boss class: he had "no hinterland of aspiration", despite sending her to private school.
But what she really can't forgive is his failure to intervene in her childhood relationship with her mother. He was physically present, but she feels he deserted her emotionally, sparking a lifelong concern about fatherlessness: had he made clear how unfair her mother's expectations were, she writes, he "could have freed me, allowing me to feel entitled to live". Instead she has struggled long and hard with the belief that: "As someone whose very life had caused my mother to be so unwell, I was really not entitled to exist." This Guardian Angel has serious demons.
It takes great bravery for a woman too often dismissed as emotional – the "Mad Mel" of unfair myth – to write like this, and risk handing her critics ammunition. It would be monstrous not to feel both respect for that courage and sympathy. Yet as a chronicle of her personal battles with the left, and its "aggression towards any dissent or challenge", this book is problematic.
It's her 16 years at the Guardian that give the book its title and heart, so it should be said that your reviewer was at primary school when Phillips joined the paper in 1977, and worked for her subsequent paper, the Observer, only after Phillips left. I claim no inside knowledge. Yet while there are some instances of what she takes to be shocking antisemitism – one colleague refers to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon as "your war", making her feel her Jewishness renders her somehow not properly British – there's a puzzle at the heart of the book. Why do these ruthlessly intolerant, totalitarian hatemongers keep trying to meet her halfway, as indeed she occasionally yearns to meet them?
Her pioneering years in news editing, struggling with toddlers at home and stroppy reporters at work, sound grim: when she starts writing about how parental separation harms children, divorced friends cool on her, and party invites dry up. Yet for all her vivid descriptions of a Guardian staff who denounce anyone failing to toe the left-wing line as "beyond the moral pale", somehow they keep promoting her.
What do they do, when she starts asking how the poor can afford video recorders? There's a personal spat with a mentor figure, but far from being excommunicated Phillips goes on to become a leader writer, articulating the paper's daily voice. Her editor Peter Preston seems oddly relaxed about her supposedly insufferable views, approving leaders "even when it was clear he didn't altogether agree". When she decides global warming is bunkum, they give her an environment supplement to edit.
Even Tony Blair responds to criticism by asking her in for a chat, and agreeing with almost everything she says about fatherlessness. If there ever was a leftwing conspiracy to crush her, it clearly couldn't organise the proverbial in a brewery. Yet that original, provocative mind still circles endlessly around one all-consuming question: why do people hate me so?
She thinks it's partly because she's Jewish, but also because she "became a lightning rod for the onslaught by the left against the foundations of western society". It's a breathtaking claim to make for her own significance, and one longs to reassure her that half the nation isn't kept awake nights plotting the downfall of civilisation. But she's so wedded to "saying the unsayable", as her new Melanie Phillips-branded merchandise has it, that she can't see how sayable it has become – what with governments echoing her views on families and phonics, public opinion lurching ever rightwards, and decades of her being employed to say it.
It's easy to poke fun, of course. But there's nothing funny about an anxious, overburdened little girl growing into a conflicted adult who still cannot bear to call herself rightwing, and who weeps when interviewed 19 years later about the paper she once felt was a substitute family. If it all feels painfully unresolved, it's hardly any wonder she has a love-hate relationship with the left. As she herself says, the terrifying but necessary process of breaking free from her suffocating life with Albert and Mabel was always "mirrored and indeed intimately wrapped up with" her rejection of their Labour politics. This was never just about ideology.
So her story is ultimately a reminder that politics is governed by deep emotions that even in the heat of battle deserve to be understood and respected. She'd probably scoff at such woolly liberalism. But I bet there's a tiny part of her that still believes in it.
• To order this book go to embooks.com
From the Guardian newspaper: Whatever would Melanie Phillips have done without the left? It has been her life's work to fight this many-headed hydra, hacking away tirelessly at its trendy teaching methods and loose morals and kooky environmentalism. But more than that, the heroic Phillips story depends not just on her vilification by the left but on leftwingers' supposed fury that she was once one of them. A martyr needs something to renounce, after all.
Her rupture with the left is rich polemical territory, and Phillips has explored it before. But with the publication of her memoir – a first venture from her new epublishing company – this time it's personal, and compellingly so.
Phillips was an only child, and she walked on eggshells. Her adored mother, Mabel, had had a nervous breakdown in her teens and remained mentally fragile, with obsessive-compulsive tendencies: theirs was a claustrophobic relationship, with the young Melanie convinced that "it would destroy her if I ever made her upset", and that she must always be unimpeachably good.
The chapter on her early childhood opens in the third person, as if such trauma could only be observed at a safe distance: the writing is melodramatic, yet the dread feels real. We see an anxious child raised to think of life in apocalyptic terms, never more than one mistake away from the mother's descent into darkness. When Phillips describes Mabel's compulsive handwashing as a strategy to "make the world an orderly place under her control, to stop it from disintegrating", it's tempting to draw parallels with the daughter's lifelong mission against moral and social collapse.
Her father, meanwhile, is portrayed as a disappointment. Albert Phillips died without savings in a rented flat, his daughter writes bitterly, having failed to do what "most other" poor Jews did and escape the East End for suburbia. For that, she blames his staunch socialist belief that workers don't aspire to the boss class: he had "no hinterland of aspiration", despite sending her to private school.
But what she really can't forgive is his failure to intervene in her childhood relationship with her mother. He was physically present, but she feels he deserted her emotionally, sparking a lifelong concern about fatherlessness: had he made clear how unfair her mother's expectations were, she writes, he "could have freed me, allowing me to feel entitled to live". Instead she has struggled long and hard with the belief that: "As someone whose very life had caused my mother to be so unwell, I was really not entitled to exist." This Guardian Angel has serious demons.
It takes great bravery for a woman too often dismissed as emotional – the "Mad Mel" of unfair myth – to write like this, and risk handing her critics ammunition. It would be monstrous not to feel both respect for that courage and sympathy. Yet as a chronicle of her personal battles with the left, and its "aggression towards any dissent or challenge", this book is problematic.
It's her 16 years at the Guardian that give the book its title and heart, so it should be said that your reviewer was at primary school when Phillips joined the paper in 1977, and worked for her subsequent paper, the Observer, only after Phillips left. I claim no inside knowledge. Yet while there are some instances of what she takes to be shocking antisemitism – one colleague refers to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon as "your war", making her feel her Jewishness renders her somehow not properly British – there's a puzzle at the heart of the book. Why do these ruthlessly intolerant, totalitarian hatemongers keep trying to meet her halfway, as indeed she occasionally yearns to meet them?
Her pioneering years in news editing, struggling with toddlers at home and stroppy reporters at work, sound grim: when she starts writing about how parental separation harms children, divorced friends cool on her, and party invites dry up. Yet for all her vivid descriptions of a Guardian staff who denounce anyone failing to toe the left-wing line as "beyond the moral pale", somehow they keep promoting her.
What do they do, when she starts asking how the poor can afford video recorders? There's a personal spat with a mentor figure, but far from being excommunicated Phillips goes on to become a leader writer, articulating the paper's daily voice. Her editor Peter Preston seems oddly relaxed about her supposedly insufferable views, approving leaders "even when it was clear he didn't altogether agree". When she decides global warming is bunkum, they give her an environment supplement to edit.
Even Tony Blair responds to criticism by asking her in for a chat, and agreeing with almost everything she says about fatherlessness. If there ever was a leftwing conspiracy to crush her, it clearly couldn't organise the proverbial in a brewery. Yet that original, provocative mind still circles endlessly around one all-consuming question: why do people hate me so?
She thinks it's partly because she's Jewish, but also because she "became a lightning rod for the onslaught by the left against the foundations of western society". It's a breathtaking claim to make for her own significance, and one longs to reassure her that half the nation isn't kept awake nights plotting the downfall of civilisation. But she's so wedded to "saying the unsayable", as her new Melanie Phillips-branded merchandise has it, that she can't see how sayable it has become – what with governments echoing her views on families and phonics, public opinion lurching ever rightwards, and decades of her being employed to say it.
It's easy to poke fun, of course. But there's nothing funny about an anxious, overburdened little girl growing into a conflicted adult who still cannot bear to call herself rightwing, and who weeps when interviewed 19 years later about the paper she once felt was a substitute family. If it all feels painfully unresolved, it's hardly any wonder she has a love-hate relationship with the left. As she herself says, the terrifying but necessary process of breaking free from her suffocating life with Albert and Mabel was always "mirrored and indeed intimately wrapped up with" her rejection of their Labour politics. This was never just about ideology.
So her story is ultimately a reminder that politics is governed by deep emotions that even in the heat of battle deserve to be understood and respected. She'd probably scoff at such woolly liberalism. But I bet there's a tiny part of her that still believes in it.
• To order this book go to embooks.com
May 26, 2025
Melanie Phillips is a brilliant and an articulated writer. Sadly, she’s somewhat ahead of her time, if you just look at the publishing houses that are willing to touch this dynamite, which will (or perhaps already has) explode any day now.
In a different book of Phillips I’ve read she’s quite opposing fraud as if he’s some kind of a new age irrational phenomenon. Interestingly enough, her life story is quite embedded in so many freudian elements which are so obvious to see. But this is not the main point, not even the left-right debate is the main point I took from this book, interesting as it is.
The main point I take from this book is about journalism, her time at the guardian and the dynamics of what Douglas Murray called, "the madness of the crowd". It’s a very important lesson to be learned here, and Phillips is one of the brave few who first put their finger on it.
In a different book of Phillips I’ve read she’s quite opposing fraud as if he’s some kind of a new age irrational phenomenon. Interestingly enough, her life story is quite embedded in so many freudian elements which are so obvious to see. But this is not the main point, not even the left-right debate is the main point I took from this book, interesting as it is.
The main point I take from this book is about journalism, her time at the guardian and the dynamics of what Douglas Murray called, "the madness of the crowd". It’s a very important lesson to be learned here, and Phillips is one of the brave few who first put their finger on it.
January 27, 2024
This book is eye-opening for anyone who wishes to try to understand what’s going on around us. Although it’s focused mostly on Great Britain, it’s a fascinating read regardless. Melanie is sharp as a tack and can say things far better than I ever could. I love her writing style. God bless her.
Here are some of my favorite quotes. There were many, and due to limitations in space, I cannot include them all.
Breakdown of Families
“Even with a loving mother, children without their father felt torn in two.
Zelda West-Meads of the marriage guidance counsellors ‘Relate’ got to the heart of the issue when she said that although many single mothers did a heroic job, it was the absence of the father that did such terrible damage to their children. This was because children drew for their own identity from the combination of male and female components of their family. Even with a loving mother, children without their father felt torn in two. ‘The denial of these inconvenient truths’, I wrote, ‘derived from the instinct for self-justification rather than care for the interests of children’ (Guardian, 11 May 1990).”
“I talked to other experts and looked at the evidence. It was unequivocal: in general and relatively speaking, divorce, step-parenting, and lone parenthood hurt children. A child psychiatrist, Dr Sebastian Kraemer, told me he regarded it as ‘a personal holocaust for the children when the parents separate… I see it clinically that children are deeply hurt, their lives are shattered because the people who got together to make them can’t keep together to bring them up’ (Guardian, 16 September 1991).”
“I was also called an ‘Old Testament fundamentalist’. At the time, I shrugged this aside as merely a gratuitous bit of bigotry. Much later, however, I came to realise that it was actually a rather precise insult. My assailants had immediately understood something I did not myself at the time understand – that the destruction of the traditional family had as its real target the destruction of Biblical morality. I thought I was merely standing up for evidence, duty and the protection of the vulnerable. But they understood that the banner behind which I was actually marching was the Biblical moral law which put chains on people’s appetites. The result was a kind of social ostracism. Gradually I noticed that I was no longer being invited to join colleagues for lunch, no longer receiving invitations to parties at their houses, no longer getting the flow of gossipy messages and office banter which had once made me feel as if I was back in an Oxford junior common room. Now, at lunchtimes, I found the office emptying around me. Few ever tried to engage me in argument. I simply became more and more isolated. Something similar was happening outside the office too. Gradually, my more politically-minded friends drifted away. From snatches of their conversation, I deduced that what had finally got to them above all was my position on family breakdown. I realised that they took it personally, those who themselves had walked out on their families or were cheating on their spouses. Some of them said to me they felt I was disapproving of what they had done. But much of the time, I had no idea at all what they had done. And in any event, I was not judging individuals (except where I knew someone really had behaved badly). Of course there were divorced or lone parents who behaved in a responsible and caring manner. I was merely writing about general patterns of relative harm – the only way one could write about public policy. Why couldn’t they understand I had not yet realised that the left’s aggression towards any dissent or challenge is essentially defensive. They are either guilty about what they are doing because they know it is wrong, or else at some level at least they know that their intellectual position is built on sand. What matters to them above all is that they are seen to be virtuous and intelligent. They care about being seen to be compassionate. They simply cannot deal with the possibility that they might not be. They deal with any such suggestion not by facing up to any harm they may be doing, but by shutting down the argument altogether. That’s because the banner behind which they march is not altruism. It is narcissism. But it took me a very long time fully to grasp this.”
“I wrote about the crucial importance of fathers to the emotional health of children, and pleaded that people should stop being frightened to say that a certain type of family was best for children’s welfare (Observer, 13 June 1993). By now, it seemed to me that family breakdown was simply dissolving the bonds of society and civilisation itself. I was reporting on whole communities where committed fathers were now almost totally unknown. Children as young as five were becoming highly sexualised from the example of their promiscuous mothers. Teachers, doctors, and social workers were horrified by the way in which both left and right were ignoring or misrepresenting this disaster: gross individual and social degradation, young men fathering children indiscriminately, widespread neglect of children who were growing up in unbridled savagery and lawlessness to despise their mothers and disdain men and all authority. As one child psychiatrist said, we were simply witnessing a breakdown in society (Observer, 17 October 1993). Surely there could be no greater issue to rouse the concern of progressives? Apparently not so. Those who dared state that in general it was best for a child to be brought up by its mother and father took their professional and social lives in their hands. Encouraging lone mothers to move off welfare and into work was now deemed to be an extreme right-wing position – even though work and family had once been the twin pillars of ethical socialism. The left now identified itself with moral relativism, the doctrine that all lifestyles were equal and none could be deemed to be better than any other. But the idea that a woman could now be both mother and father to her children — more, that it was her ‘right’ to choose such a lifestyle — led directly to the hopeless plight of often inadequate women left to struggle alone with raising children while the men who fathered them were in effect told they were free to do their own thing.”
“… children in shattered families living on welfare benefits and with no fathers around possessed mountain bikes and video recorders, and yet when they arrived in their nursery class they had to be taught to eat with a knife and fork at a table because they had only ever eaten with their hands in front of the TV (Observer, 17 October 1993). Ours is a society of deep poverty, I wrote, but it is not merely material but moral and intellectual, with the breakdown of marriage at the root of this impoverishment (Observer, 5 June 1994).”
Israel
“A watershed moment occurred in December 2001 when I was on the panel of Question Time, a weekly BBC current affairs show with a live audience. This edition was being televised from Bristol, an educated, civilised university town. An Israeli in the audience asked why the Americans could go halfway around the world to root out terror in Afghanistan when the Israelis were condemned for doing the same in their own backyard. Was this not a double standard? Not at all, said the rest of the panel. Despite its citizens being blown to bits in buses and cafes, Israel was apparently guilty of war crimes and the indiscriminate bombing of apparently universally innocent Palestinians. And from the audience came the considered view that Israel was the source of terror in the Middle East, that it was responsible for ethnic cleansing, and that what it was doing was as bad as what was being done to it. I was stupefied by such perverse factual and moral inversion. When it was my turn to answer the question, I said I wondered why people had no sympathy when Israelis tried to prevent themselves from being murdered; and that the Palestinian Authority was a sponsor of terror and incited violence daily against Israelis and Jews across the world. As I spoke, I was aware of a low hissing from the audience. I looked at them and saw disbelief and faces convulsed with hatred. I said Israel was the only democracy in the Middle East. The audience laughed. Worse was to come. A novelist on the panel, Will Self, leaned across the table. Where, he demanded, did my own loyalties lie? If Britain declared war on Israel, whose side would I be on? I was most deeply shocked. For defending Israel I was being accused of dual loyalties, of somehow being a traitor to Britain, just because I was a Jew (no less barbed for the fact that Self himself has a partly Jewish heritage). If I had been a non-Jew defending Israel, that particular charge would never have been laid against me: the ancient, bigoted canard of dual loyalty hurled at diaspora Jews throughout the centuries.
For myself and countless British Jews watching the show, (as they still tell me even to this day) this was a defining moment. In that instant, I realised this was not some rogue set of attitudes. British Jews had been living in a fools’ paradise during the half-century since the discovery of the Nazi extermination camps had sent Jew-hatred underground. Now this had abruptly and shockingly come to an end. Mainstream opinion had become infected by an animus against Israel that was simply impervious to reason and which was in turn legitimising anti-Jewish prejudice of the kind that once would have been confined to the fringes of society and subject to condign disapproval.
And there was no doubt that 9/11 had fed the madness. For a common reaction in Britain was — astonishingly — that America had had it coming because it backed Israel; and it was Israel’s ‘oppression’ of the Palestinians that was the cause of Muslim rage. It was as if the Muslim-on-Muslim and Muslim-on-Christian jihad raging through the Third World, not to mention the explicit Islamist agenda to conquer the West, just didn’t exist.”
“In 2001, I was told I was disloyal to Britain just for supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, even though I had visited it only twice and did not particularly want to go again. Time and again, I was told to go and live in Israel because that was my country — when it was not. I could never relax when turning on the radio or TV, opening a newspaper or going to a dinner party, for fear of hearing some libellous accusation or other casual prejudice against Israel or the Jews. And if I protested, it was made clear that it was I who was causing great offence to decent British people -- amongst whom of course I was not to be counted, but was instead to be disdained and marginalised as the ‘wailing Jew’. I had been made to feel an outsider in my own country. The real tragedy of all this, however, is that it means Britain does not understand that the interests of its own Jewish community — which remains conspicuously loyal to Britain — dovetail completely with the geopolitical interests of Britain itself. And this is not despite its attachment to Israel, but because of it. If Israel were ever to go down, Britain and the West would be next in line and with no defender in the Middle East. The fate of the Jewish people is inseparable from the fate of Britain and the West. Rather than levelling the distasteful canard of 'dual loyalty' at those British Jews who feel an attachment to Israel, the British would serve their own interests rather better if they were to be more like America, where the non-Jewish public overwhelmingly backs Israel as the guarantor of its own culture of liberty.’"
Journalists at “The Guardian”
“… the defining feature of Guardian journalists – a narcissistic self-regard based upon a fixed belief in their own superiority and righteousness, nurtured by indulgence and privilege. We believed that the Guardian was simply more civilised than any other newspaper in Britain. Indeed, ‘civilised’ was the word frequently on our lips as we congratulated ourselves for being quite different from the rapacious and unprincipled rogues, spies, and thugs employed in the rest of Fleet Street.”
Morality
“The values that drove me were not political or economic but moral.”
“I was therefore neither left-wing nor right-wing, but rather promoting a moral position. But the left had vacated morality for self-interest. Spitting hatred and pouring bile, it denounced ‘moralisers’ such as me as sour and joyless glums. Irony and self-awareness were never the left’s strongest suit.”
Sexual Violence
“… when a gang of Pakistani Muslim men was convicted in 2012 of more than two decades of sexual violence against young, predominantly white girls living in children’s homes in the north of England, Ann Cryer, a former Labour MP, said that complaints to social workers and the police had been ignored because they were ‘petrified of being called racist’ (Daily Telegraph, 8 May 2012).”
Here are some of my favorite quotes. There were many, and due to limitations in space, I cannot include them all.
Breakdown of Families
“Even with a loving mother, children without their father felt torn in two.
Zelda West-Meads of the marriage guidance counsellors ‘Relate’ got to the heart of the issue when she said that although many single mothers did a heroic job, it was the absence of the father that did such terrible damage to their children. This was because children drew for their own identity from the combination of male and female components of their family. Even with a loving mother, children without their father felt torn in two. ‘The denial of these inconvenient truths’, I wrote, ‘derived from the instinct for self-justification rather than care for the interests of children’ (Guardian, 11 May 1990).”
“I talked to other experts and looked at the evidence. It was unequivocal: in general and relatively speaking, divorce, step-parenting, and lone parenthood hurt children. A child psychiatrist, Dr Sebastian Kraemer, told me he regarded it as ‘a personal holocaust for the children when the parents separate… I see it clinically that children are deeply hurt, their lives are shattered because the people who got together to make them can’t keep together to bring them up’ (Guardian, 16 September 1991).”
“I was also called an ‘Old Testament fundamentalist’. At the time, I shrugged this aside as merely a gratuitous bit of bigotry. Much later, however, I came to realise that it was actually a rather precise insult. My assailants had immediately understood something I did not myself at the time understand – that the destruction of the traditional family had as its real target the destruction of Biblical morality. I thought I was merely standing up for evidence, duty and the protection of the vulnerable. But they understood that the banner behind which I was actually marching was the Biblical moral law which put chains on people’s appetites. The result was a kind of social ostracism. Gradually I noticed that I was no longer being invited to join colleagues for lunch, no longer receiving invitations to parties at their houses, no longer getting the flow of gossipy messages and office banter which had once made me feel as if I was back in an Oxford junior common room. Now, at lunchtimes, I found the office emptying around me. Few ever tried to engage me in argument. I simply became more and more isolated. Something similar was happening outside the office too. Gradually, my more politically-minded friends drifted away. From snatches of their conversation, I deduced that what had finally got to them above all was my position on family breakdown. I realised that they took it personally, those who themselves had walked out on their families or were cheating on their spouses. Some of them said to me they felt I was disapproving of what they had done. But much of the time, I had no idea at all what they had done. And in any event, I was not judging individuals (except where I knew someone really had behaved badly). Of course there were divorced or lone parents who behaved in a responsible and caring manner. I was merely writing about general patterns of relative harm – the only way one could write about public policy. Why couldn’t they understand I had not yet realised that the left’s aggression towards any dissent or challenge is essentially defensive. They are either guilty about what they are doing because they know it is wrong, or else at some level at least they know that their intellectual position is built on sand. What matters to them above all is that they are seen to be virtuous and intelligent. They care about being seen to be compassionate. They simply cannot deal with the possibility that they might not be. They deal with any such suggestion not by facing up to any harm they may be doing, but by shutting down the argument altogether. That’s because the banner behind which they march is not altruism. It is narcissism. But it took me a very long time fully to grasp this.”
“I wrote about the crucial importance of fathers to the emotional health of children, and pleaded that people should stop being frightened to say that a certain type of family was best for children’s welfare (Observer, 13 June 1993). By now, it seemed to me that family breakdown was simply dissolving the bonds of society and civilisation itself. I was reporting on whole communities where committed fathers were now almost totally unknown. Children as young as five were becoming highly sexualised from the example of their promiscuous mothers. Teachers, doctors, and social workers were horrified by the way in which both left and right were ignoring or misrepresenting this disaster: gross individual and social degradation, young men fathering children indiscriminately, widespread neglect of children who were growing up in unbridled savagery and lawlessness to despise their mothers and disdain men and all authority. As one child psychiatrist said, we were simply witnessing a breakdown in society (Observer, 17 October 1993). Surely there could be no greater issue to rouse the concern of progressives? Apparently not so. Those who dared state that in general it was best for a child to be brought up by its mother and father took their professional and social lives in their hands. Encouraging lone mothers to move off welfare and into work was now deemed to be an extreme right-wing position – even though work and family had once been the twin pillars of ethical socialism. The left now identified itself with moral relativism, the doctrine that all lifestyles were equal and none could be deemed to be better than any other. But the idea that a woman could now be both mother and father to her children — more, that it was her ‘right’ to choose such a lifestyle — led directly to the hopeless plight of often inadequate women left to struggle alone with raising children while the men who fathered them were in effect told they were free to do their own thing.”
“… children in shattered families living on welfare benefits and with no fathers around possessed mountain bikes and video recorders, and yet when they arrived in their nursery class they had to be taught to eat with a knife and fork at a table because they had only ever eaten with their hands in front of the TV (Observer, 17 October 1993). Ours is a society of deep poverty, I wrote, but it is not merely material but moral and intellectual, with the breakdown of marriage at the root of this impoverishment (Observer, 5 June 1994).”
Israel
“A watershed moment occurred in December 2001 when I was on the panel of Question Time, a weekly BBC current affairs show with a live audience. This edition was being televised from Bristol, an educated, civilised university town. An Israeli in the audience asked why the Americans could go halfway around the world to root out terror in Afghanistan when the Israelis were condemned for doing the same in their own backyard. Was this not a double standard? Not at all, said the rest of the panel. Despite its citizens being blown to bits in buses and cafes, Israel was apparently guilty of war crimes and the indiscriminate bombing of apparently universally innocent Palestinians. And from the audience came the considered view that Israel was the source of terror in the Middle East, that it was responsible for ethnic cleansing, and that what it was doing was as bad as what was being done to it. I was stupefied by such perverse factual and moral inversion. When it was my turn to answer the question, I said I wondered why people had no sympathy when Israelis tried to prevent themselves from being murdered; and that the Palestinian Authority was a sponsor of terror and incited violence daily against Israelis and Jews across the world. As I spoke, I was aware of a low hissing from the audience. I looked at them and saw disbelief and faces convulsed with hatred. I said Israel was the only democracy in the Middle East. The audience laughed. Worse was to come. A novelist on the panel, Will Self, leaned across the table. Where, he demanded, did my own loyalties lie? If Britain declared war on Israel, whose side would I be on? I was most deeply shocked. For defending Israel I was being accused of dual loyalties, of somehow being a traitor to Britain, just because I was a Jew (no less barbed for the fact that Self himself has a partly Jewish heritage). If I had been a non-Jew defending Israel, that particular charge would never have been laid against me: the ancient, bigoted canard of dual loyalty hurled at diaspora Jews throughout the centuries.
For myself and countless British Jews watching the show, (as they still tell me even to this day) this was a defining moment. In that instant, I realised this was not some rogue set of attitudes. British Jews had been living in a fools’ paradise during the half-century since the discovery of the Nazi extermination camps had sent Jew-hatred underground. Now this had abruptly and shockingly come to an end. Mainstream opinion had become infected by an animus against Israel that was simply impervious to reason and which was in turn legitimising anti-Jewish prejudice of the kind that once would have been confined to the fringes of society and subject to condign disapproval.
And there was no doubt that 9/11 had fed the madness. For a common reaction in Britain was — astonishingly — that America had had it coming because it backed Israel; and it was Israel’s ‘oppression’ of the Palestinians that was the cause of Muslim rage. It was as if the Muslim-on-Muslim and Muslim-on-Christian jihad raging through the Third World, not to mention the explicit Islamist agenda to conquer the West, just didn’t exist.”
“In 2001, I was told I was disloyal to Britain just for supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, even though I had visited it only twice and did not particularly want to go again. Time and again, I was told to go and live in Israel because that was my country — when it was not. I could never relax when turning on the radio or TV, opening a newspaper or going to a dinner party, for fear of hearing some libellous accusation or other casual prejudice against Israel or the Jews. And if I protested, it was made clear that it was I who was causing great offence to decent British people -- amongst whom of course I was not to be counted, but was instead to be disdained and marginalised as the ‘wailing Jew’. I had been made to feel an outsider in my own country. The real tragedy of all this, however, is that it means Britain does not understand that the interests of its own Jewish community — which remains conspicuously loyal to Britain — dovetail completely with the geopolitical interests of Britain itself. And this is not despite its attachment to Israel, but because of it. If Israel were ever to go down, Britain and the West would be next in line and with no defender in the Middle East. The fate of the Jewish people is inseparable from the fate of Britain and the West. Rather than levelling the distasteful canard of 'dual loyalty' at those British Jews who feel an attachment to Israel, the British would serve their own interests rather better if they were to be more like America, where the non-Jewish public overwhelmingly backs Israel as the guarantor of its own culture of liberty.’"
Journalists at “The Guardian”
“… the defining feature of Guardian journalists – a narcissistic self-regard based upon a fixed belief in their own superiority and righteousness, nurtured by indulgence and privilege. We believed that the Guardian was simply more civilised than any other newspaper in Britain. Indeed, ‘civilised’ was the word frequently on our lips as we congratulated ourselves for being quite different from the rapacious and unprincipled rogues, spies, and thugs employed in the rest of Fleet Street.”
Morality
“The values that drove me were not political or economic but moral.”
“I was therefore neither left-wing nor right-wing, but rather promoting a moral position. But the left had vacated morality for self-interest. Spitting hatred and pouring bile, it denounced ‘moralisers’ such as me as sour and joyless glums. Irony and self-awareness were never the left’s strongest suit.”
Sexual Violence
“… when a gang of Pakistani Muslim men was convicted in 2012 of more than two decades of sexual violence against young, predominantly white girls living in children’s homes in the north of England, Ann Cryer, a former Labour MP, said that complaints to social workers and the police had been ignored because they were ‘petrified of being called racist’ (Daily Telegraph, 8 May 2012).”
May 21, 2026
I love reading journalist works, and this lady is probably my favourite living one.
December 2, 2019
Moving from left to right
I was very moved by this book. Melanie Phillips has written a deeply personal memoir which is also an excoriating indictment of the Left. At a time when many are feeling the scales fall from their eyes about the intolerance inherent in the realities of the fake caring in the current version of socialism, this is a must-read for those who surprise even themselves by ending up on the other side of the political spectrum. I would also recommend it for those left-wingers who I now regard as being blinded by the ideology which has been drummed into us from all sides of the media and many educational establishments, even including government. It's a short book which economically and lucidly covers a lot of ground.
Phillips starts off with a very personal analysis of her family's dynamics and the way this shaped her view of the world. Fairly central to this is her Jewish identity and how this placed a moral view as the focus of her universe. Some of it is painful to read, but it's never self-indulgent or self-pitying.
Next, and most compellingly, Melanie Phillips describes her time working at The Guardian during the 1980s and early 90s. In describing the atmosphere at The Guardian Phillips describes the intriguing and constant atmosphere of dissatisfaction that was always in the air.
"... the whining and the plotting were surely in the main a byproduct of the defining feature of Guardian journalists – a narcissistic self-regard based upon a fixed belief in their own superiority and righteousness, nurtured by indulgence and privilege."
Starting off as an idealistic liberal, she gradually found the reality of socialist cameraderie to be only surface deep. The intolerance of the supposedly tolerant people who surrounded her and the tyranny of never submitting to wrongthink, slowly but surely wore her down and eventually became unbearable. What I found most shocking about her account was that the seeds of leftist intolerance and the urge to censor which are so prominent now in the Internet age, were present as far back as the 1980s in places such as The Guardian.
"I was not driven by ideology. I simply went where the evidence led me. And in time, this would lead me into head-on confrontation with the left, who had replaced truth with ideology and whose weapon of choice against all dissent was vilification and demonization."
Thinking about that, made me realise that of course there have always been deeply controlling, authoritarian forces present within some elements of Marxism almost from the beginning, but I'd always seen that as part of the Communist Party and not in what was supposed to be the liberal left. What is exposed is that the supposed kindness and concern of 'softer' socialism doesn't really exist in practice, but seems to be a facade which the left wears ideogically.
Melanie's book traces and links the current tyranny of imposed intersectional behavioural norms which is being thrust on us, viewing this through her journalistic experience and exposes the reality which includes shocking anti-semitism and deep intolerance.
It's all a very compelling read.
I was very moved by this book. Melanie Phillips has written a deeply personal memoir which is also an excoriating indictment of the Left. At a time when many are feeling the scales fall from their eyes about the intolerance inherent in the realities of the fake caring in the current version of socialism, this is a must-read for those who surprise even themselves by ending up on the other side of the political spectrum. I would also recommend it for those left-wingers who I now regard as being blinded by the ideology which has been drummed into us from all sides of the media and many educational establishments, even including government. It's a short book which economically and lucidly covers a lot of ground.
Phillips starts off with a very personal analysis of her family's dynamics and the way this shaped her view of the world. Fairly central to this is her Jewish identity and how this placed a moral view as the focus of her universe. Some of it is painful to read, but it's never self-indulgent or self-pitying.
Next, and most compellingly, Melanie Phillips describes her time working at The Guardian during the 1980s and early 90s. In describing the atmosphere at The Guardian Phillips describes the intriguing and constant atmosphere of dissatisfaction that was always in the air.
"... the whining and the plotting were surely in the main a byproduct of the defining feature of Guardian journalists – a narcissistic self-regard based upon a fixed belief in their own superiority and righteousness, nurtured by indulgence and privilege."
Starting off as an idealistic liberal, she gradually found the reality of socialist cameraderie to be only surface deep. The intolerance of the supposedly tolerant people who surrounded her and the tyranny of never submitting to wrongthink, slowly but surely wore her down and eventually became unbearable. What I found most shocking about her account was that the seeds of leftist intolerance and the urge to censor which are so prominent now in the Internet age, were present as far back as the 1980s in places such as The Guardian.
"I was not driven by ideology. I simply went where the evidence led me. And in time, this would lead me into head-on confrontation with the left, who had replaced truth with ideology and whose weapon of choice against all dissent was vilification and demonization."
Thinking about that, made me realise that of course there have always been deeply controlling, authoritarian forces present within some elements of Marxism almost from the beginning, but I'd always seen that as part of the Communist Party and not in what was supposed to be the liberal left. What is exposed is that the supposed kindness and concern of 'softer' socialism doesn't really exist in practice, but seems to be a facade which the left wears ideogically.
Melanie's book traces and links the current tyranny of imposed intersectional behavioural norms which is being thrust on us, viewing this through her journalistic experience and exposes the reality which includes shocking anti-semitism and deep intolerance.
It's all a very compelling read.
February 7, 2018
Loved this story. Melanie Phillips writes clearly and succinctly about her journey as a journalist, writer, daughter to a changed view of the world and world affairs. She speaks for many of use as we look with dismay at the deterioration in reportage and journalism and the actions of our political class. Some family sadness adds depth and the gradual freezing out from the supposed rarified air of the Guardian newspaper makes this book very compelling. A recommended read if you are wondering what on earth has happened to being able to read a newspaper or watch a mainstream news broadcast and receive the facts and not spin or lies.
September 29, 2020
Fascinating read which provides great insight. Melanie Phillips follows the evidence where it leads and only then reaches a conclusion. I love her summing up "So finally, to the question I am constantly asked whether I am now on the left or right, the answer is: neither. I am simply Alfred and Mabel's daughter, a Jew who believes in helping make the world a better place, and a journalist who believes in speaking truth to power. As I always did from the start. Only some of the details changed"
December 30, 2016
Phillips' analysis of the state of Britain today is topnotch. Not surprisingly she feels like a lone voice, a Cassandra, warning the country about its downward flight into anarchy and chaos, brought about by a Left that has put aside almost all traditional morality in favour of 'progressive' ideas, ideas that are ruining the country.
Great book.
Great book.
April 8, 2020
Insightful and True
Melanie is as always a very good read , this book is no exception.
For her former colleagues on the left, their intelligence has left them exposed to becoming like characters from a Lewis Carroll novel. Melanie is one of a few righters and thinkers on the right side of sanity.
Highly recommend this book.
Melanie is as always a very good read , this book is no exception.
For her former colleagues on the left, their intelligence has left them exposed to becoming like characters from a Lewis Carroll novel. Melanie is one of a few righters and thinkers on the right side of sanity.
Highly recommend this book.
February 8, 2021
very thoughtful and provocative. very contemporary, in times where everyone wants to have a voice and knows better. it is important to really understand what you stand for and avoid labels.
not that I agree with the author in everything (climate change) but most of the issues were spot on: education, family
not that I agree with the author in everything (climate change) but most of the issues were spot on: education, family
November 24, 2019
Eye Opening
I love how she writes but what she has written is so important. If you're a conservative in America, this will scare you a bit to see what we're up against, and how it has already played out in Britain. What a courageous woman!
I love how she writes but what she has written is so important. If you're a conservative in America, this will scare you a bit to see what we're up against, and how it has already played out in Britain. What a courageous woman!
March 9, 2020
Revealing analysis of the left's hatred of rational thought and it's undermining effects of democracy
Melanie Phillips is a champion of rational thought regarding Israel and democracy in general and has the writing ability to effectively promote her views. Truly a great read.
Melanie Phillips is a champion of rational thought regarding Israel and democracy in general and has the writing ability to effectively promote her views. Truly a great read.
February 14, 2021
As a disillusioned leftie myself I felt myself relating to this book 100%. The racism of the left is something that has never been properly reported on and is something that needs addressing on a daily basis. Thank you Melanie for articulating what I never could.
May 6, 2018
One of the most important books out there. A must read for everyone to understand what groups are tearing down and attacking Western Civilization.
March 8, 2019
Powerful woman with a tragic warning! MUST READ!!
March 2, 2026
This is a good read for sure. In part it is a history about the author. But with that comes her insights about the Leftist movement. A lot of which left unsaid. Wroth a second read.
Some notable quotes:
“My assailants had immediately understood something I did not myself at the time understand: that the destruction of the traditional family had as its real target the destruction of Biblical morality. I thought I was merely standing up for evidence, duty and the protection of the vulnerable. But they understood that the banner behind which I was actually marching was the Biblical moral law which put chains on people’s appetites.”
― Melanie Phillips, Guardian Angel: My Journey from Leftism to Sanity
“A culture can pull back from the brink of collapse if it tears off its suicidal blinders in time. This can still be achieved, but it requires a recognition above all of the paradox that so many fail to understand. This is that freedom only exists within clear boundaries, and that preserving the values of western civilization requires a robust reassertion of the Judeo-Christian principles on which its foundations rest. And that requires moral, political and religious leadership of the highest order, not to mention buckets of courage.”
― Melanie Phillips, Guardian Angel: My Journey from Leftism to Sanity
Some notable quotes:
“My assailants had immediately understood something I did not myself at the time understand: that the destruction of the traditional family had as its real target the destruction of Biblical morality. I thought I was merely standing up for evidence, duty and the protection of the vulnerable. But they understood that the banner behind which I was actually marching was the Biblical moral law which put chains on people’s appetites.”
― Melanie Phillips, Guardian Angel: My Journey from Leftism to Sanity
“A culture can pull back from the brink of collapse if it tears off its suicidal blinders in time. This can still be achieved, but it requires a recognition above all of the paradox that so many fail to understand. This is that freedom only exists within clear boundaries, and that preserving the values of western civilization requires a robust reassertion of the Judeo-Christian principles on which its foundations rest. And that requires moral, political and religious leadership of the highest order, not to mention buckets of courage.”
― Melanie Phillips, Guardian Angel: My Journey from Leftism to Sanity
December 15, 2021
I think this was a good and concise memoir, and it was interesting to read about Melanie's formative years - I can somewhat relate, as I too grew up in an insular family with similar dynamics. She later recounts her time at the Guardian, and her slow disillusionment with that world - she steadily and competently unmasks the nasty scourge of left-wing anti-Zionism and radicalism, and the Left's broader suppression and marginalisation of dissent and counter-evidence, something which I am all too aware of as a former member of a left-wing party here in Australia (I feel my own life mimics Phillips' in many ways...) I liked how she showed her vulnerable and human side, including her struggles to cope in her job at The Guardian in the early years, such as the fact she collapsed on the floor on her first day as an editor, and how she documents her ambivalent yet loyal relationship to her parents, and extended family. Overall, a decent read which gives more depth and substance beyond her public face.
March 23, 2020
This is very much a stream-of-conscience memoir not a calm, analytical, researched document, and that's ok, because there is room in the world for both kind of books. I suppose the question if you like this book depends almost solely on the question if you agree with the writer's views, which I most whole-heartedly do. She expresses a lot of things I feel but never quite knew how to say.
Still, if I try to examine it as a book, it was interesting to get somewhat of a behind-the-scenes look at the large British newspapers and world of journalism. Also, I can see, for the author, how her personal and professional stories are very intertwined, but, for the reader, whose emotions are of course not so intense - not so much. But, I guess that's one of the points of an autobiography - to convey the author's emotional state as well factual journey through life.
Still, if I try to examine it as a book, it was interesting to get somewhat of a behind-the-scenes look at the large British newspapers and world of journalism. Also, I can see, for the author, how her personal and professional stories are very intertwined, but, for the reader, whose emotions are of course not so intense - not so much. But, I guess that's one of the points of an autobiography - to convey the author's emotional state as well factual journey through life.
October 1, 2020
It's an autobiography which is probably enjoyable if you read it, but I bought the audible version, in which the producer had the brilliant idea to make the reader read in every bloody reference in mid-sentence, effectively rendering the experience unenjoyable.
It also has a somewhat misleading title; it's much more like a very personal memoir than a book about politics. It's highly subjective, intimate, and I think the subtitle is effectively bait, not real.
So I listened to it, and then I returned it.
It also has a somewhat misleading title; it's much more like a very personal memoir than a book about politics. It's highly subjective, intimate, and I think the subtitle is effectively bait, not real.
So I listened to it, and then I returned it.
January 1, 2023
I stumbled on Melanie Phillips when listening to her being interviewed. Her perspectives interested me so I hunted for a book she had authored and this book was the one I selected. While being a memoir of her life - her childhood, her family, her employment etc - it was also a very good summary of the insanity of the left and the state of journalism. I will definitely be reading more of this author's work. I appreciated her voice of reason.
January 7, 2020
Great insight and very readable
Good to read a book that is well written and that deals with controversial issues in a clear and robust way. Any honest appraisal of the issues and the evidence will struggle to arrive at very different conclusions. I would only add that it ended rather abruptly, but well done for writing a difficult book well.
Good to read a book that is well written and that deals with controversial issues in a clear and robust way. Any honest appraisal of the issues and the evidence will struggle to arrive at very different conclusions. I would only add that it ended rather abruptly, but well done for writing a difficult book well.
July 23, 2025
Dissecting left progress movements such as value-based education, multiculturalism and environmentalism, Melanie Phillips, from the eyes of a prior Guardian journalist, compare their relative similarities to Marxism and subjective moralism.
November 6, 2023
Fascinating tale of Phillips personal development and career journey. Her experiences changed her politics and it is fascinating to read how they evolved.
October 20, 2026
The mark of a Leftist is to respond to facts and reason with name-calling and obfuscation.
Melanie recounts her story well.
Melanie recounts her story well.
October 27, 2026
Every once in a while I like to read a book that makes me think about politics, religion and world views. Not entertaining but very interesting.
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