James Marriott (@j_amesmarriott) / X

James Marriott

14.6K posts

James Marriott

@j_amesmarriott

Columnist at The Times Newsletter: Cultural Capital Book: The New Dark Ages: The End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-Literate Society.

London via Newcastle upon Tyne

amazon.co.uk/New-Dark-Ages-…

Joined September 2016

Pinned
James Marriott
@j_amesmarriott
Feb 16
And The New Dark Ages has a cover! Bitter years of book reviewing have taught me not to get too excited and that most books are fated to be ignored. But I am finding it difficult to remain entirely jaded in this instance
James Marriott
@j_amesmarriott
Dec 18, 2025
Exciting (to me) news.
345K
James Marriott
@j_amesmarriott
Mar 31, 2021
Have just been privileged to witness the most east London moment of my life. Spoken by a woman kayaking frantically down the Regent's canal towards a pedestrian on the towpath: "Oh my God. Francesca is that you? We met in Goa! At the breath workshop! Remember?"
James Marriott
@j_amesmarriott
Jul 13, 2025
This is amazing. I'm learning to accept that I fundamentally just don't care about that much battles, diplomatic treaties etc. But if I can read about birth rates or why people started drinking coffee or whatever I'm transfixed
682K
James Marriott
@j_amesmarriott
May 15, 2019
Jacob Rees-Mogg has written a history book. The Times's reviewer calls it "staggeringly silly", "morally repellent", "clumsily written" and "pompous".
thetimes.com
The Victorians by Jacob Rees-Mogg review — ‘a staggeringly silly piece of history’
Jacob Rees-Mogg’s self-consciously “old-fashioned” manners and appeals to patriotism are familiar to all TV viewers. He would like us to believe that his monetarism and his Euroscepticism have their...
James Marriott
@j_amesmarriott
Oct 4, 2025
Another vignette from the post-literate society. Reading books used to be something a lot people did for fun - now it is a specialist skill that has to be taught by universities
270K
James Marriott
@j_amesmarriott
Jul 17, 2025
Probably one of the most prophetic paragraphs of the twentieth century - from Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985)
304K
James Marriott
@j_amesmarriott
Jun 30, 2019
My mum has been texting me Glastonbury advice
James Marriott
@j_amesmarriott
Dec 28, 2024
Have been on a strange magical streak of extremely good books over Christmas. I think this - about a nunnery in the fourteenth century - is one of the best historical novels I've ever read. Possibly the best.
226K
James Marriott
@j_amesmarriott
Dec 23, 2024
One of the most ridiculously enjoyable books ever written in English
308K
James Marriott
@j_amesmarriott
Oct 1, 2025
This is a wonderful and moving book predicting the replacement of books by screens published in 1996. The author repeatedly apologises for how pessimistic he sounds. He had no idea.
94K
James Marriott
@j_amesmarriott
Sep 23, 2025
One interesting response to this piece is the number of people who have told me that the Dickens passage American university students were unable to understand in the famous study of reading comprehension is absurdly difficult. I really don't think it's that hard.
James Marriott
@j_amesmarriott
Sep 19, 2025
My magnum opus - a unified field theory of why the post-literate society is a catastrophe for civilisation as we know it api.omarshehata.me/substack-proxy…
646K
James Marriott
@j_amesmarriott
Jul 27, 2025
Been on a streak of great history books recently. This was just fantastically good - a cultural and social history of the origins of the French revolution covering hot air balloons, Rousseau, pamphlets, fluctuating bread prices...
165K
James Marriott
@j_amesmarriott
Aug 11, 2025
Loved this. To me one of the most interesting and exciting moments in history - when the old European world view founded on social hierarchy and religion is really shaken for the first time by science and reason
131K
James Marriott
@j_amesmarriott
May 25, 2019
I interviewed Bradley Wiggins about his cultural life. Probably my most challenging assignment as a journalist. thetimes.co.uk/article/962196…