Berry, Neil 1952-

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BERRY, Neil 1952-

PERSONAL:

Born 1952, in England. Education: Received doctorate from London University.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o Author Mail, Waywiser Press, 9 Woodstock Road, London N4 3ET, England.

CAREER:

Freelance journalist, 1980—.

WRITINGS:

Articles of Faith: The Story of British Intellectual Journalism, Waywiser Press (London, England), 2002.

Contributor to Henry James on Stage and Screen, edited by J. R. Bradley, Palgrave (New York, NY), 2000. Also contributor to numerous journals and pulications, including the Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, New Statesman, Listener, Guardian, and Encounter.

SIDELIGHTS:

A freelance journalist and contributor to a number of Britain's prestigious literary and political publications, Neil Berry decided to undertake a history of the United Kingdom's great public journals. In Articles of Faith: The Story of Britain's Intellectual Journalism, Berry tells the story of the public-minded editors who established some of Great Britain's most prestigious magazines, starting with Francis Jeffrey, editor of the Edinburgh Review from 1802 to 1829. As Berry describes him in an article for the Guardian, Jeffrey "believed it was the reviewer's duty to subject authors to the 'wholesome discipline of derision.' A barrister, who did his editing and writing in his spare time, Jeffrey stood for editorial independence, something hardly known in the 18th century, when reviews were owned and managed by booksellers."

It is this tradition of independent, progressive journalism that Berry hopes to celebrate in his chronicle of the great reviews. "Both Jeffrey and [Fortnightly Review editor John] Morley appeal to Berry because they were progressives. The notion of intellectual journalism as, ideally, an engine of social progress underlies the whole book," noted Times Literary Supplement contributor John Gross. Berry does not, however, ignore more conservative journalist-intellectuals such as James Knowles. A fervent imperialist with strong connections to the British establishment, Knowles edited the Nineteenth Century from 1877 to 1908 at the height of England's wealth and power. Berry also covers the curious history of Encounter, a highly respected journal that turned out to be funded by the CIA in a scandal that rocked the literary world.

Other sections cover such influential journals as Kingsley Martin's New Statesman, which attracted contributions from Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev and United States Secretary of State John Foster Dulles at the height of the cold war, and Karl Miller's London Review of Books, a more recent incarnation of Jeffrey's journalistic vision. In fact, much of the final section of Articles of Faith is a kind of appreciation of Miller, whose career encompassed distinguished editorial stints at the Spectator, the New Statesman, and the BBC's Listener, before his founding of the London Review of Books in 1979. For New Statesman contributor Nicholas Bagnall, Berry's book "is full of good stories; I could discover no major inaccuracies…and his prose has caught a bit of the grandeur of those old Victorian reviewers."