The Guardian was the family paper because my mother decided that when she went to university she should read a quality daily: she chose the Manchester Guardian, so I was brought up on James Cameron and Nancy Banks-Smith. I’m 50 now, so I’ve been reading it for some 35 years. When it did its big design change in the mid-80s, I was working on a student magazine and we all earnestly and a bit arrogantly picked apart the new look.
I’m a solicitor in a large international commercial law firm. It’s fair to say I don’t come across many other Guardian readers in my line of work. Joris Luyendijk’s Voices of Finance series was very perceptive: it made me realise that the City, in which I work, must seem like a rather exotic zoo. I like the way the Guardian is constantly taking its readers into bits of the world they’d probably rather not go.
The paper has always mattered to me somehow. I was stupidly proud when I fed a story to the diary in the early 90s and saw it in print. When, a few years later, the business section covered a case I was involved in, I was furious at how wrong they got it and how they seemed to have been taken in by a not very pleasant character. I was disappointed, as a headmaster might be of a lively but troublesome pupil.
I live in Warwickshire. We moved out of London some 20 years ago. We still regret leaving its life and opportunities and so many of our friends, but the peace and the beauty of ever-changing light on the country fields as we walk our dog make up for a lot, as do the local schools and house prices. More importantly, friendship and support come easily in our little town. And we can be in the stalls at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 25 minutes. We’d have to live in Shaftesbury Avenue to see theatre that good that quickly in London. We see a lot of plays.
I love the fashion and the sports pages: Jess Cartner-Morley, Hadley Freeman and Barney Ronay. I know nothing and care little about frocks or football, but that’s often where the best writing in the paper is. They write about the same thing every week, so it has to be excellent to be interesting – and it’s always both.
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