“A bold appointment aged 28 by the then editor, Tina Brown, in 1996, he has lost none of his freshness in the years since. This may be ascribed, in part, to writing fortnightly rather than, as he would have to do in the daily press, weekly or thrice-weekly – a hamster’s wheel that can grind down even the most gifted of reviewers into somnolent fashioners of clichés.”