Marina Hyde

Marina Hyde has worked at the Guardian since 2000, where her weekly columns have won her a reputation as one of the most admired journalists in the UK.

Marina is the recipient of multiple awards, including the 2020 Edgar Wallace Award for writing of the highest quality, and has been named Political Commentator of the Year for the past two years by the Society of Editors, and Commentator of the Year at the Press Awards for the past three years running.

She joins us to discuss What Just Happened?!: Dispatches from Turbulent Times, an examination of the delusional fever-dream that is our modern age.

No other writer is more suited to chronicling the absurd times in which we live. In What Just Happened?! Marina Hyde slashes her way through the hellscape of post-referendum politics, where the chaos never stops. Clamber aboard as we relive every inspirational moment of magic, from David Cameron to Theresa May to Boris Johnson. Marvel at the sights, from Trumpian WTF-ery to celebrity twattery.

And boggle at the cast of characters: Hollywood sex offenders, populists, sporting heroes (and villains), dastardly dukes, media barons, movie stars, reality TV monsters, billionaires, police officers, various princes and princesses, wicked advisers, philanthropists, fauxlanthropists, telly chefs, and (naturally) Gwyneth Paltrow. It’s the full state banquet of crazy – and you’re most cordially invited.

Drawn from her spectacularly funny Guardian columns, What Just Happened?! is a blast of humour and sanity in a world where reality has become stranger than fiction.

“An infinite number of gag-writers, working all day in a gag factory, couldn’t come up with any of the perfectly-formed one-liners that populate Marina Hyde’s hilarious writing . . . But behind the wit lurks real anger, argument, exasperation and intelligence. Her writing is more than a gentle poke in the ribs: it’s a well-wrought and deftly aimed smash in the teeth.” ~ ARMANDO IANNUCCI