I’m a feature writer and editor based in south London. My work has appeared in FT Weekend Magazine, Esquire, The Economist and Real Review, and I’ve reported from China to the US, using storytelling to break down complex ideas, trends and industries.
I also work with brands like Chanel and Nike on editorial consultancy, content strategy and storytelling. In other words, I help their ideas land.
In recent years, I was the editor of Courier Media, leading the magazine’s first major refresh and shaping stories at the intersection of modern business and culture across print, email, video and online.
Before that, I spent six years at the Financial Times – as commissioning editor, and later acting deputy editor, of the weekly culture section Life & Arts. There, I wrote, commissioned and edited longform features, launched new editorial products and presented the weekly culture podcast.
Journalism
Journalism
My features and profiles have appeared in publications such as The Financial Times, The Economist, Esquire, Courier, The New Statesman, The Whitney Review of New Writing, Prospect, Port and Real Review.
Clients
Clients
Nike, Samsung, EQT, Protein Agency, Amazon, Chanel.
Extracts
Extracts
Hans Niemann isn’t one to let go of a grudge. Two years after a major cheating scandal, the 21-year-old American grandmaster has found himself sort of vindicated. Even so, straight after qualifying for the finals of the Speed Chess Championship in Paris, where just four players compete in the fastest version of the game, he started cranking up the tension. Few people in chess emerged unscathed. In some of his tamer outbursts, he described Chess.com, the game’s most popular platform, as “evil” and “corrupt”. Magnus Carlsen, widely regarded as the best chess player in history, was “deluded” and “sick”. “It’s impossible for someone to comprehend the insanity of what they have unleashed upon me,” Niemann said. The finals in Paris would give him the opportunity to “settle things”, whatever that meant, “because what I experienced was truly hell. And all for what?”
The chaos transforming chess – Prospect
The barmaid places two cocktails on the counter in front of us and declares, “Boys, I made them extra special for you. They’re a fruity floral combination of chartreuse, gin, peach schnapps, cranberry-pineapple punch and a splash of tonic. Is that slutty enough?”
“Damn, yes!” the Fat Jew replies, before sampling the bright pink liquid through a straw. “So. Fucking. Good. Tastes like air freshener!”
Lunch with the FT: Fat Jew – FT Life & Arts
Can anyone remember a recent Olympics that passed without a doping scandal? If spectators really want to witness athletes go faster, higher, stronger, Aron D’Souza thinks he has a better solution. He argues that partly because of strict anti-doping rules (which he refers to as the “exploitative practices of the International Olympic Committee”), the Olympics no longer represent the greatest sporting spectacle on the planet, or the epitome of athletic excellence.
His solution is the Enhanced Games: elite sport, plus performance-enhancing drugs. In return for smashing records, million-dollar prizes. The idea is to push the limits of humanity as much as possible, tapping into the wider biohacking movement that’s especially popular with Silicon Valley and tech bros.
Less clear is what it means for athlete safety and sporting integrity. To get a better idea, I went to meet D’Souza at the Enhanced Games offices, based in a private members’ club in west London. On the way, I messaged a friend asking what he thinks about the idea of athletes being encouraged to take performance-enhancing drugs in training and competition. “If people want to shorten their lives by jacking themselves up and transforming into freaks, I say more power to them!” he replied. “If someone can throw a javelin 1.2km, sweet, I’ll watch that.”
The outrageous business of greatness – Esquire
Spend more than five minutes online and you inevitably run into them: meringue swans, pastry peacocks, bras made from oranges, baby potatoes covered in tattoos. They’re everywhere on social media – outrageous, brilliant and intricate creations made using food, all so perfect it’s not even clear if you’re supposed to eat them. Conventional wisdom tells us not to play with our food. Don’t touch it. Don’t move it around. Don’t do anything other than eat it. But rules are made to be broken, and this one already feels outdated. Food has become raw material, and we’re reshaping it in stranger, louder and more surreal ways than ever.
How playing with your food became art – Courier
Everyone loves to hate on book acknowledgements. And although they’ve been around for decades in some form or another at the end of books, the hate has been intensifying. At this turning point, they have an almost universally bad reputation for signalling the moment when writers break out from the style of writing that sustained their work up until that point, when their pared back sentences, restrained and precise, suddenly become filled with adjectives and cliches. Publishers thanked for their patience, editors for their brilliance, loved ones for their unwavering support. You kept me sane. You fiercely believed. It takes a village. So on and so forth.
But I should come clean. I’m an acknowledgements fanboy. And as someone who turns to the thank-yous right away whenever I start a new book, I can attest that they are getting longer. In Lean In (2013), Sheryl Sandberg really lets loose, her acknowledgements running across eight pages and thanking 150 people. A decade later, the cringe has proliferated. Look no further than celebrity books like Prince Harry’s Spare to more literary titles like R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface (both 2023).
When did writers become so melodramatic? Their job is neither debilitating nor essential; often it is exactly what they said they always wished for. Also, it wasn’t always like this, at least not publicly.
In defence of acknowledgements – The Whitney Review of New Writing
On a recent weekday morning, I visited AXA Art at an unremarkable office block in central London. A full-bodied burgundy canvas, produced in 1997 by Ed Ruscha, was hanging on the wall in front of me, the words “Do as told or suffer” bleached over and censored with white bars. Like other works by the American pop artist, it’s a painting that startles and unnerves. But no longer can it be legally described as an artwork. During a recent private view at a London gallery, a celebrity visitor accidentally spilled a glass of wine over it while inspecting the painting up close. Only a few drops made contact but that was enough for AXA to declare it a total loss.
The grey, unlovely office turns out to be a treasure trove of art that will not die, though it lives on largely unseen and unappreciated. On one wall hangs an Andy Warhol-inspired dress emblazoned with Campbell’s soup cans (it now has a small rip in it). Across the room stands a blackened sculpture by Scottish artist David Mach of cartoon character Betty Boop. Made of matchsticks, it went up in flames.
What happens when art breaks? – FT Weekend Magazine
Venkatesh Rao, a writer and management consultant sometimes referred to as a gonzo economist, recently coined the term “domestic cosy”. Against the backdrop of the climate crisis, generational insecurity and widening inequality, he explained how escape and retreat were becoming the dominant characteristics of late teenagers and young adults. “I’m calling it early,” he posted on X. “Gen Z is gonna be Domestic Cosy. Yeah, you heard it here first.”
The homebody economy explained – Courier
Not so long ago, Liu Dezhi would head to the village square on weekends when he wanted to see a film. In this rural area of Hengdian, nearby to a gritty manufacturing hub and 300km south of Shanghai, itinerant cinema operators would unfurl a canvas screen, plug in some speakers, and screen grainy films in the open air.
“We had to bring our own chairs if we wanted to sit,” says Liu, a 41-year-old factory worker and film buff. “You couldn’t hear the dialogue because of the stray dogs barking at your feet.”
Today, Liu and his friends get their fix at the local state-of-the-art multiplex outfitted with plush seating, 3D screens and popcorn imported from America. When he’s not watching films, Liu stars in them by working as an extra at Hengdian World Studios. Once a barren patch of farmland, Hengdian is now the world’s largest film production studio, and is better known as “the Hollywood of the East”, “China’s Hollywood”, or even more succinctly, “Chinawood”.