Pippa Bailey

London

Assistant Editor and Writer at The New Statesman

Assistant editor & writer @newstatesman | DMs open | Subscribe to the https://t.co/7G8UYGRCrY

Articles

My dad was that thing every child wishes their parents could be: cool

1 week ago | newstatesman.com | Pippa Bailey

In the quiet of the hospital ward at night, the rush of the oxygen tube sounded like the hiss of a record still spinning after the music has ended. I had never noticed it before, though it was our constant companion in his last days. In the half light of the small hours, we took up our places as watchful sentries at his bedside, we two women, daughter and wife. Death seemed to come for him slowly, and then all at once. People say that once a person has died, what remains is no longer really them.
Why I’m falling for East 17

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | Pippa Bailey

We seem to have chosen just the right moment to move to Walthamstow. The week before we got the keys to our new flat at the end of August last year, the area’s only cinema – closed since the previous summer – reopened under new ownership. Next, in March, the Times named E17 the best place to live in London. Getting “Stay Another Day” stuck in my head every time I write my postcode seems a fair price to pay for such heights.
Misogyny in the metaverse

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | Pippa Bailey

In 2021, in the “Founder’s Letter” that announced his vision for a completely immersive virtual world, Mark Zuckerberg wrote: “In the metaverse, you’ll be able to do almost anything you can imagine.”This prospect, the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, Laura Bates writes, “might sound intensely appealing” to some men, but terrifies most women – women who know all too well that there is plenty men can imagine that should never be allowed to happen.
Faith is a half-formed thing

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | Pippa Bailey

Lamorna Ash begins Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever by lying to herself. After a comedy duo she knew from university, Jack and Josh, simultaneously converted to Christianity and decided to become Anglican priests, Ash, 29, set out to understand how faith could prompt such radical change. It was a purely academic, journalistic pursuit, she writes. “I am not here to be changed.” And yet.
Ah, baking, the only hobby I’ve really stuck to

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | Pippa Bailey

There’s a running joke among my friends that if there was a crafting version of an EGOT – The Great British Bake Off, The Great British Sewing Bee, The Great Pottery Throw Down – I would be first to raise the bunting-adorned trophy. This is categorically nonsense. I could probably have a good run at the Sewing Bee, but the speed it demands would soon undo me.
Church and an all-girls school gave me great freedom to be uncool

2 months ago | newstatesman.com | Pippa Bailey

You know you’re getting on a bit when you spend your Friday evening lamenting: the problem with kids these days… Last week I went for dinner with my friend C—, and over a curry we discussed – prompted, as is 95 per cent of conversation nowadays, by Adolescence – what future might await her young children, and how she can keep them safe. To what extent should she allow them to make their own mistakes, to find their own way?
Adriana Brownlee interview: “As soon as you think of records, it gets dangerous”

2 months ago | newstatesman.com | Pippa Bailey

There are few settings more removed from the rigmarole of modern life than standing on the summit of one of the world’s highest peaks. Yet this is the point in a climb when real life intervenes, says Adriana Brownlee, who in October last year became the youngest woman ever to climb all 14 8,000-metre mountains. Exhilaration “turns into stress.
What is school for?

2 months ago | newstatesman.com | Pippa Bailey

In 1939 the American educator Harold Benjamin published a book of satirical essays, The Sabre-Tooth Curriculum. One tells the story of a Stone Age man called “New-Fist-Hammer-Maker”. New-Fist sets up a school that teaches “fish-grabbing-with-the-bare-hands”, “woolly-horse-clubbing” and “sabretooth-tiger-scaring-with-fire”. But then, an ice age comes, and the environment changes so that the Palaeolithic people can no longer grab fish with their bare hands or catch woolly horses to club them.
In defence of cabaret-style seated gigs

Mar 26, 2025 | newstatesman.com | Pippa Bailey

One side effect of flying solo for a month is that – recognising that just because I could quite happily spend every evening at home watching television, that doesn’t mean that I should – I’ve taken to saying yes to any and all invitations. That’s how I found myself this week watching the singer-songwriter Ashley Campbell perform at London’s Brasserie Zedel with my friend Emma, J— and C—, a couple from South Florida, and Stanley Tucci.
Snow White review: Disney’s modernised remake falls flat

Mar 19, 2025 | newstatesman.com | Pippa Bailey

How to remake Disney’s 1937 animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in the era of woke? The simplest answer might be: don’t. Disney’s latest live-action adaptation – which follows Cinderella (2015), The Jungle Book (2016), Beauty and the Beast (2017), Aladdin (2019), Mulan (2020) and The Little Mermaid (2023) – has been mired in controversy since its casting announcements four years ago.