You've got to love Tina Brown, whose online magazine The Daily Beast historically merged with the print title Newsweek late last week. In his new autobiography, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards says that, at the height of his cocaine phase, he only slept twice a week – so he has packed more into his life than most of us will ever manage.
But I think some people are just like that: tireless, positive, endlessly curious, always bouncing back. The record shows they took the blows, as Frank Sinatra sang. Tina is like that. Born British, she edited the society magazine Tatler before moving to the States, where she was editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker – which she modernised and saved from a slow death. Her next venture was the short-lived Talk magazine, which became a victim of 9/11 and the subsequent recession. When print began to lose its lustre, she launched The Daily Beast as an online title. And now she's back at the helm of a magazine again, and poised to save Newsweek. Tina is a role model not just for journalists, or even for women, but for ambitious people everywhere.
Actually I have a small connection with Tina's (no doubt proud) husband, Sir Harold Evans, a former editor of The Sunday Times. His book, Newsman's English, taught me how to write like a reporter. The secret is short sentences – and a lust for life.
