Start the Week - 'Is Faster Better?'

UPDATE: The episode's now been aired. You can listen again here

I'll be appearing on 'Start the Week' with Andrew Marr tomorrow morning, in the first stage of the publicity campaign for 'The Great Acceleration'. The topic is 'Is Faster Better?', and the panel includes Carl Honoré (author of 'In Praise of Slow' and 'The Slow Fix'), Prof Steve Jones (veteran science writer and author of 'No Need for Geniuses', about scientists and the French Revolution) and Sarah Dunant (author, critic and general literary/historical expert).

This is, obviously, mildly terrifying, but I'm looking forward to the discussion. I also gave my first talk about the book over the weekend, at the Cambridge Union - it was part of 'ThinkCon', which in turn was part of the Cambridge Science Festival. There was a decent, interested crowd and I hope I made some interesting points. I also sold my very first copy of the book. To my brother-in-law. Baby steps, eh?

Technical difficulties

Eager readers may have noticed that I haven't updated for a while. This is partly due to an insanely busy schedule, and partly due to the fact that my hosting service has taken to killing my half-written updates at seemingly random intervals, invariably a few seconds before I remember to hit the 'save' button.

So, in lieu of the beautifully crafted thousand-word exploration of the process of publishing a book (which I'll rewrite once I've stopped crying), here's a brief highlights reel. I've written half a dozen pieces on British politics for Politico Europe, book reviews for the Telegraph of 'This Is London' and 'Comrade Corbyn' (both well worth reading, incidentally), pieces for CapX on Brexit, the NHS, immigration and the Sex Pistols. This last week has been particularly crazy: among other things, I've written on the Zika virus for the Wellcome Trust, Apple vs the FBI for the Telegraph, Britain's problems building tech giants for the FT and Facebook Instant Articles on Medium. 

Looming behind it all, however, has been THE BOOK. As of today, we've finalised the contents and cover, sent preview copies to various eminent figures and got them to say nice things, arranged various articles to coincide with publication, and I've even booked a venue for a party. (I say we because most of this has been taken care of by the team at Bloomsbury, who are immensely experienced at easing panicky novices through the process.) I've still got no idea how it will be received. But I want to be able to tell myself I did everything I could to give it the best chance to find an audience. More on that - much more - as publication date approaches...

Inside the battle for Brexit

In 2016, one issue above all will dominate British politics - the European referendum. So far, most people have only the haziest idea what's in store, which is why I interviewed the heads of the three campaigns involved for Politico Europe - Matthew Elliott of Vote Leave, Arron Banks of Leave.EU and Will Straw of Britain Stronger in Europe (aka Stronger In). Their comments are well worth reading - obviously they can't all be right about their own strengths and weaknesses, but I hope it gives a solid idea of where the battleground will be and how the campaign will be fought.