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A tribute to James Michie

James Michie, gentle genius

Boris Johnson

Wednesday, 7th November 2007

Jaspistos remembered

It is a measure of James Michie’s extreme modesty that most of the younger people who bumped into him in the offices of The Spectator probably hadn’t the foggiest idea who he really was.

They might see him reading in the afternoon, sitting with a glass of wine and a half-smile, in the room that led out to the garden. They might have met him on the stair, bearing a sheaf of scrupulously emended proofs.

They would have heard him addressed only as ‘James’, and the hordes of young thrusting proto-journalists who passed through the offices of The Spectator would have concluded that this was some kind of landmark of literary London.

He was plainly a man of great gifts. His headlines were lapidary, and swiftly produced. He seemed to be full of quips. His opinions seemed to be greatly valued by the editors.

Yes: they said to themselves, this is evidently some corduroyed bohemian wordsmith, some chum of Larkin and Amis — and they would hug themselves with pleasure at rubbing shoulders with such picturesque folk, and rejoice at whichever string it was they had pulled to secure their work experience.

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