Byline Times is a reader-supported monthly news publication focusing on elite corruption, the rise of the far right, big tech and more. I've been writing for them since I wrote to its editor Peter Jukes in 2020 suggesting a travelogue of the Northern Labour-voting towns referred to as the "red wall", then much in the news. Covid put paid to that series, but I still write for the magazine:
2025
- 'The Cannon Fodder Conspiracy Theorists' (paywall, 30th January 2025)
2024
- 'Things That Go Bump in the Night: Finding Comfort in the Paranormal on the BBC' (30th October 2024)
- 'Megalopolis and the Least Popular Genre of All Time' (paywall, 8th October 2024)
- 'The Hollywood Studios That Are Scared of Trump' (paywall, 21st July 2024)
2023
- 'Shane Macgowan, Government Censorship and the Birmingham Six' (paywall, 9th December 2023)
- 'Disney, Doctor Who and Britishness' (20th November 2023)
- 'Killers of the Flower Moon Exposes America's Original Sin' (paywall, 18th October 2023)
- 'Lessons from the Barbenheimer Summer' (paywall, 14th September 2023)
- 'The Death of the Metaverse' (paywall, 2nd June 2023)
- 'The Gossip Industry and Perilous Pop Fandom (print edition, June 2023)
- 'What Lurks Beneath England's Green and Pleasant Land?' (article on British feelgood films, print edition, May 2023)
- 'The Fourth Estate on the Silver Screen' (print edition, April 2023)
- 'Food for Thought' (article on The Gleaners and I, print edition, March 2023)
- 'The Roald Dahl Affair is a Lesson in the Culture Wars of Nostalgia' (22nd February 2023)
- 'Britannia Really Unchained: The Burnout Cult of Work Conceals a Jealousy Against Pleasure' (20th February 2023)
- 'Donkey's Years' (article on EO, print edition, February 2023)
2022
- 'How Cinema Got Serious About Abortion' (print edition, December 2022)
- 'Why Are We Asking if Emily Brontë Needed a Man's Help to Write Wuthering Heights?' (print edition, November 2022)
- 'A Chemical in the Works? The Mystery of the Marine Deaths on Teesside' (27th October 2022)
- 'Why Jean-Luc Godard (Still) Matters' (15th September 2022)
- 'Salman Rushdie: The Offence Defence is Not Enough' (15th August 2022)
I also wrote an article about Liz Truss's first - and only - Conservative Party Conference as Prime Minister, which wasn't published because, by the time it was edited, the news had moved on. You can read that here.
2020
- 'QAnon in Georgia: The Conspiracy Theory That Has Become an Article of Faith' (18th June 2020)
- 'Postcards from the Red Wall: Victory Celebrations for a Nation at War With Itself' (19th May 2020)
- 'Postcards from the Red Wall: A Town With Contradictions' (23rd March 2020)
- 'Postcards from the Red Wall: The Other Baker Street' (6th March 2020)