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

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)

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 panellist 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] and 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.[10]

Published books edit

  • 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 edit

External links edit