Journalism

As fine and thoughtful a theatre critic as you will find anywhere,” Michael Marshall, Managing Editor, The World & I, US monthly magazine.

In 1979, John joined the International Association of Theatre Critics (IATC/AICT), a UNESCO NGO (Non-Governmental Agency), which brings together those (world-wide) who write about the theatre – journalists, academics, and literary managers. The Cold War, which had dominated international relations since the end of WW2, was coming to an end. Following a period of détente, the barriers that separated East from West were broken down, culminating in the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989. John was elected in Mexico as an IATC Vice-President in 1984, and as world President in Rome in 1985, a role that he retained until 1992, twice re-elected. His aim was to overcome the decades of Cold War hostilities, encourage the appreciation of diverse cultures, and to support conferences and festivals.

During the 1960s, John was the theatre correspondent and talent scout at Paramount Pictures; and taught part-time at the City Literary Institute, Drury Lane, London, where he started a theatre group. He contributed articles mainly on the theatre to The London Magazine, then edited by the poet and cricket correspondent, Alan Ross. This was London’s leading cultural magazine, founded in 1732, which published poems, short stories, and social criticism, from a wide range of international writers.

The Contemporary Review (CR), a monthly magazine, was founded in 1866 as a vehicle for the growing community of writers who sought to express their hopes for a brave new world, transformed by science, democracy, and the Industrial Revolution. It was ‘left-of-centre’, with unofficial links to the Liberal Party, progressively Christian, or humanist in outlook. Its early contributors included John Ruskin, W.E. Gladstone, Matthew Arnold, J.M. Barrie, and Aldous Huxley.

PR, Lord’s reform, Gordon Brown’s ‘people’s convention’: they have their merits, says John Elsom, but we need to go further

The Catch-22 of electoral reform under the British system is that you must win a parliamentary majority by first-past-the-post before you can introduce proportional representation (PR). By some quirk of nature, this is rarely the priority of a party that has just got into power. Reforming zeal evaporates. They hum and haw. There may be a case for a fairer system, they concede, but there are more urgent matters in their in-trays, and their government should lead from the front and not be distracted by constitutional niceties …