Sam Knight

3 days 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

2 weeks 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.

1 month 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.

Jan 20, 2025 | businessandamerica.com | Sam Knight

The Security Council meeting was about the war in Ukraine. A large mural in the chamber, by the Norwegian artist Per Krohg, loomed over Lammy’s right shoulder. At the base, a dragon was removing a sword from its own body. “The world we see in the foreground is collapsing,” Krohg explained seventy-five years ago.