Hilary Mantel's comments on the Duchess of Cambridge are brave and necessary
The double-Booker winning author Hilary Mantel has caused controversy, after delivering an uncompromising critique of the Duchess of Cambridge. The lecture she gave to the London Review of Books is now...
View ArticlePress regulation and the Internet's "ethical vacuum"
Following the Royal Charter announcement earlier this week, there has been much concern over how the new system for press regulation will affect bloggers. English PEN expressed concerns about this...
View ArticleDefamation Day
No, not a day where we pick someone to defame. Instead it is the final parliamentary debate on the Defamation Bill. Following this process has been a great way to watch how law-making really happens....
View Article"A looming democratic deficit"?
The folk at the brilliant OurKingdom blog commissioned a piece from me on the next steps for Libel Reform. The crucial issue: During the Parliamentary debates, the Government flatly rejected proposals...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Liberty Annual Conference: Is Speech Free Online?
I was delighted to be asked to speak on a panel at the Liberty Annual Conference yesterday. I took part in the ‘Is Speech Free Online?’ discussion with Ian Dunt of politics.co.uk and the Erotic Review,...
View ArticleThoughts on the Mail on Sunday secret scandal
According to the Mail on Sunday, David Cameron recently learnt of a sex-scandal involving prominent members of his government. ‘For legal reasons’ the paper cannot name the people involved. On Twitter,...
View ArticleThe Defamation Act 2013: Complete & Unabridged
As is my wont, I made a book to illustrate this. Physical objects are useful props in debates like this: immediately illustrative, and useful to hang an argument and peoples’ attention on. James Bridle...
View ArticleQuoted in the Washington Post
I’m delighted to have spoken to the Washington Post for an article about the Twitter abuse furore: “The worry is that the abuse button will be abused,” said Robert Sharp, a spokesman for English PEN, a...
View ArticleThe Outliers
I have worked for (and with) some courageous people at English PEN. I am often struck by the personal cost of exercising your right to free expression, and how damaging to life and finances taking...
View ArticleThe Coercive Royal Charter
The Royal Charter that would establish a body to oversee press regulation was due to be referred to the Privy Council today. But industry bodies representing the press have filed an injunction against...
View ArticleQuestions for the Impress Project, part I
Last Monday, my former colleagues Jonathan Heawood and Lisa Appignanesi launched the Impress project. This is an attempt to devise a new press regulator that is compliant with the principles of the...
View ArticleQuestions for the Impress Project, part II
Thinking more about the Impress initiative, I think the main issue with the idea of a ‘Leveson compliant’ regulator is that Sir Brian’s principles might not be the most appropriate way to solve the...
View ArticleFree Speech, Offence, and Maajid Nawaz
Maajid Nawaz, the author of Radical and the Liberal Democrat Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, has been at the centre of a controversy this week, after he tweeted a image...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Defending Free Speech for the Far Right
I had fifteen seconds of fame on Friday, defending the free expression of far right political groups. The anti-fascist campaign group Hope Not Hate have called for Hungarian politician Gabor Vona to be...
View ArticleJail Verse: Poems from Kondengui Prison
The latest act of literary campaigning from English PEN is to publish Jail Verse: Poems from Kondengui Prison by Enoh Meyomesse. Enoh has been an opposition activist in Cameroon for decades. In 2012 he...
View ArticleFree speech will suffer if politicians get tough on offensive tweets
I’ve had another article published on Comment is Free—this time about social media prosecutions and the tougher prison sentences that MPs want to introduce to punish those who send threatening messages...
View ArticlePutin is sanitising the voice of ordinary Russians
Vladimir Putin has this week signed into a law some measures to ban swearing in films, books and music. Films with obscene content will not be granted a distribution certificate and exisiting books...
View ArticleUKIP’s muddled sense of free expression
In a recent press release, Janice Atkinson, a UKIP candidate for the European Parliament, calls on the police to prosecute Hope Not Hate and Unite Against Fascism protesters under ‘hate crime’...
View ArticleCanaries down the free speech mine
On Tuesday I was quoted in a Belfast Telegraph report on the rise of super-injunctions in Northern Ireland. Super-injunctions, you will recall, are those special types of gagging-order where the judge...
View ArticleHacked Off: Unwitting support for self-censorship?
There was some controversy last month surrounding free speech group Index on Censorship. They’ve appointed Steve Coogan as a patron, but he is famously a part of the Hacked Off campaign which supports...
View Article
