Sam Knight

1 week ago | newyorker.com | Sam Knight

When Ford returned to his gallery, he entered Orlik’s name into Artnet, the art-price database. His search yielded barely any results. According to Pietruszka, Orlik had exhibited his work in the seventies and early eighties before turning his back on the art market, though he continued to paint prolifically in his home, a one-bedroom flat in Kensington. For decades, Orlik was financially supported by his parents, who were factory workers in Swindon. But they died around the turn of the century.

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Sam Knight |Simon Barnard |Nicola Alexandrou |Leah Green

We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors. This week, from 2016: For decades, Alan Yentob was the dominant creative force at the BBC – behind everything from Adam Curtis to Strictly Come Dancing. He was a towering figure in British culture – so why did many applaud his very public slide from power? Written and read by Sam Knight

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Sam Knight

Shortly before 10 A.M. on August 22, 2019, Alaa Abd el-Fattah, a bushy-haired Egyptian blogger and activist, who had woken up that morning in a police station in Cairo, shared a Facebook post with his hundred and sixty-seven thousand followers. El-Fattah, who was thirty-seven, had become a national figure in Egypt during the country’s 2011 revolution. He was part of a generation who believed that open-source programming and a free internet would transform societies in the Middle East.

2 months ago | newyorker.com | Sam Knight

In July, 2024, Friend reached La Salette Fallavaux, a spectacular shrine in the French Alps, ringed with mountains and sky. It had felt essential to include the site in her project. “Can I come back with anything at all?” Friend wondered. “Just anything, and it will feel complete.”In 1846, while tending their cows, a fourteen-year-old girl and an eleven-year-old boy reported meeting a beautiful lady in a small ravine at La Salette-Fallavaux. The woman was bathed in light and huddled over in grief.

Mar 6, 2025 | newyorker.com | Sam Knight

On a recent foul, late-winter London morning—the sort when you can smell the river and almost taste the greasy sheen on the sidewalks—I had breakfast with Jim Waterson, the one-man operation behind London Centric, a six-month-old newsletter attempting to fill the void left by the collapse of local news in the city. It was a Friday, the day that Waterson chases down leads and finds stories. We met next to Paddington Station.