Big Idea brewingAROUND the time that Michael Elliott, then a Britain correspondent at this newspaper, was steeped in an analysis of London’s revival—published in January 1986—Prince Charles came for lunch at The Economist. Where, the prince asked the journalists, were Britain’s entrepreneurial industries of the kind America nurtured at MIT? “There,” said Mike, with a sweep of his arm towards the panorama of London behind him. “In Covent Garden, Sir, in music, in arts, in advertising. That’s our MIT.”
The sweeping view was something Mike produced with gusto, not just at The Economist, but at Newsweek and Time too, for he had senior roles at all three. Here he was the founding author of both the Bagehot column on British politics and the Lexington one on America (named after the first skirmish in America’s war of independence, where the British drew first blood before being harried back to Boston).
In America Mike found his spiritual home. No one cared about a Scouse accent and, in contrast to...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/29OfZyZ
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