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Sam Leith

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Sam Leith
Born (1974-01-01) 1 January 1974 (age 50)
Paddington, London, England
OccupationJournalist, columnist, novelist
Alma materMagdalen College, Oxford
Period1996–present
ParentsPenny Junor
James Leith
RelativesPrue Leith (aunt)[1]
Danny Kruger (cousin)

Sam Leith (born 1 January 1974) is an English author, journalist and literary editor of The Spectator.

After an education at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford, Leith worked at the revived satirical magazine Punch, before moving to the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph,[2] where he served as literary editor until 2008. He now writes for several publications, including the Financial Times, Prospect, The Spectator, The Wall Street Journal Europe and The Guardian.[3] He had a regular column in the Monday London Evening Standard.[4] and appeared as a panelist on BBC Two's The Review Show.[5] Since January 2024 he has written a monthly Spectator column on computer gaming.[6]

Leith has published several works of non-fiction, including Dead Pets, Sod's Law, You Talkin' to Me? and a book of poetry entitled Our Times in Rhymes: A Prosodical Chronicle of Our Damnable Age[7] The Coincidence Engine,[8] his first novel, was published in April 2011. Leith succeeded Mark Amory as literary editor of The Spectator in September 2014,[9] where he described himself as "this magazine’s token wishy-washy centre-left liberal".[10] He was a judge on the panel of the 2015 Man Booker Prize, won by Marlon James with A Brief History of Seven Killings. In November 2016, Leith was named the winner of the Columnist of the Year award at The Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards.[11]

Published books

  • Dead Pets: Eat Them, Stuff Them, Love Them (Canongate, 2005)
  • Daddy, Is Timmy in Heaven Now? (Canongate, 2006)
  • Sod's Law: Why Life Always Falls Butter Side Down (Atlantic, 2009)
  • The Coincidence Engine (Bloomsbury, 2011)
  • You Talkin' to Me?: Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama (Profile Books, 2011)
  • Words Like Loaded Pistols: Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama (Basic Books, 2012) – US edition
  • Write to the Point: How To Be Clear, Correct and Persuasive on the Page (Profile Books, 2017)
  • Write to the Point: A Master Class on the Fundamentals of Writing for Any Purpose (The Experiment, 2018) – US edition
  • Our Times in Rhymes: A Prosodical Chronicle of Our Damnable Age, illus. Edith Pritchett (Square Peg, 2019), OCLC 1129688625

References

  1. ^ Leith, Sam (29 August 2017). "What it was like to be taught to cook by my aunt - and GBBO judge - Prue Leith". Evening Standard. Retrieved 16 January 2020.
  2. ^ Daily Telegraph columns
  3. ^ The Guardian contributor page
  4. ^ Evening Standard columns Archived 3 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  5. ^ The Review Show
  6. ^ Leith, Sam (6 January 2024). "Computer games aren't a total waste of time". The Spectator. Retrieved 5 February 2024.
  7. ^ Charlotte Higgins You Talkin' to Me? by Sam Leith - review The Guardian, 13 October 2011
  8. ^ Killian Fox The Coincidence Engine by Sam Leith – review The Guardian, 3 April 2011
  9. ^ Literary Editor Mark Amory retires from The Spectator, but will he be replaced?, Melville House Publishing, 19 September 2014
  10. ^ Leith, Sam (15 July 2024). "It wasn't just Trump who dodged a bullet. It was all of us". The Spectator. Retrieved 15 July 2024.
  11. ^ The Comment Awards 2017 #eiCA17 brought to you by Editorial Intelligence Archived 29 January 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Winners 2016


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