Image: Jonathan Borba via Unsplash A.A. Gill forged a career through his ability to skewer individuals, tear their flaws wide open and lay them out on his pages for his readers to ridicule. Each weekend, Gill’s faithful followers would open The Sunday Times, gleefully awaiting the victim he had prepared for them. A restaurant could have main courses that “would have got a Third World Airline grounded,” The X Factor might be termed a “vaudevillian parade of money boys, fat loud girls, last-chance widows and duos with sob stories,” or Morrissey could be unveiled as “the most ornery, cantankerous, entitled whingeing, self-martyred human being who ever drew breath”.
Nothing seemed beyond his reach; everything could be clawed at and carved up for the public to revel in. Gill’s put-downs became legendary, a journalist who fought back against society, decrying what he saw as wrong as much as he praised what he saw as wonderful. With a witty, wispy, waspishness, Gill ground his targets down and highlighted their inadequacies like a lyrical overlord.
Listening to Helena Bonham Carter and Louis Theroux on Theroux’s Grounded podcast, it is striking to hear the anxiety that the late critic still inspires in their voices. Despite having built careers of resounding success, thrilling audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, the two stars still squirm at the memory of Gill reviewing their work, worried how his tongue might lash them. Yet, unlike some of the other journalists they mentioned, their words were filled with respect, admiring Gill’s judgment as much as his skill in conveying it. This is the root of Gill’s expertise: not degrading someone for the cheapest of laughs, but assessing them fairly, before attacking or acclaiming with an equal ferocity.
It is why his collection, Lines in the Sand, makes for such emotive and varied reading. Yes, there are the trademark bombardments, including the infamous dissection of Morrissey and his autobiography, but they are few and far between. Instead, the focus is upon Gill’s ability to create and evaluate, to paint a scene in his reader’s mind and fill it with figures and feeling.
The book opens with a selection of Gill’s writing on asylum seekers, desperate individuals escaping Syria, Burma, Guatemala and myriad horrors that fill our modern world. Here, there is no terror in Gill’s assessments, no attempts to attack those already suffering, but a candid tenderness, unforced and unedited, pouring straight from the writer’s heart.
In depicting the experiences of the refugees, Gill’s strings of adjectives add empathy with every word, homing in on the exact scene in front of him and the pain of those that live in it. His turns his talent for sketching people to sympathetic portrayals, offering snippets of their stories which encapsulate the horrors they have faced. Minute facial details embody months and years of sorrow; each crease, blink and tick, represents the burden of those left behind. Throughout the work, there is no doubt of Gill’s allegiance. He travels where few journalists dare to go, catching rides with human traffickers and meeting with fearsome generals in their desperate search for the refugees. Gill tells the story of those separated from loved ones, by death and by distance; those driven from their homeland by gangs and conflict; aid-workers struggling to help without medicine or money. He is always aware of the bigger picture, switching between the local and global contexts as easily as zooming in and out on an iPhone photo. There is disgust for those that have caused these people’s suffering, frustration with powers that neglect to help, but above all there is compassion for the people for whom this is reality. Gill repeatedly refers to the temporariness of his visits, knowing that he will return to London and his family while his subjects will continue to endure, with nothing but dreams of such stability.
Among the many moving passages that mark Gill’s writing on refugees, the opening to ‘Lampedusa’ stands out. In imagining 520 passengers huddled on a fishing boat travelling from Africa to Europe, Gill displays the price that they have paid, financially, physically and emotionally, to reach this point. He visualises their hope as they make the final journey to a new life, only to drag it from under them in revealing the boat’s eventual fate. As Gill reflects on the 368 who drowned while trying to gain the coastguard’s attention, there is a sinking inevitability to his words which reaffirms that this is not unique. These victims are not alone in their agony. In 2020, as Home Secretary Priti Patel speaks of ‘pushing back’ refugees who attempt to cross the Channel, the passage is even more worrying: the lessons have not been learnt and the pain is set to be repeated. Gill’s writing should be compulsory for the Cabinet before they make their decision on refugees, showing them the potential cost of their legislation.
Yet, while Gill’s refugee pieces dazzle and dismay in equal parts, they do not make up the entirety of Lines in the Sand. There are terrific travel articles, meandering through Hong Kong’s architecture, colonialism and cuisine; or unpicking the many cities of London, from expensive dining halls to Shelter suppers; or commenting on the Indian desire to experience Western culture. Food is at the centre of most of them: as Gill’s specialist subject, he speaks of meals with effortless elegance, whether describing national dishes or a McDonald’s dinner.
Further on, there are evaluations of Kipling and Wodehouse, tracing their charm and their declining popularity, championing their brilliance though understanding their limitations. Lord Snowdon is interviewed in suitably enigmatic fashion as he shares his photography collection, identifying the differences in his two personalities: the royal and ‘Tony.’ There is Gill’s wonderfully self-deprecating ‘Life at Sixty’, which covers everything from sex to smoking, friends to fatherhood, and looks back on his experiences as he declares the success of his generation with characteristic charm.
With 42 articles from across the 2010s, Lines in the Sand shows this master of journalism at his mature peak, combining his panache with added pertinence and perspective. The book displays his remarkable range, each piece flourishing with Gill’s distinctive flair, no matter how the subject varies. It builds to a beautiful crescendo, finishing with Gill’s final column for The Sunday Times, published the day after his death, in which humour is at a minimum, replaced with heart-breaking honesty.
He describes his treatment for cancer, comparing the care he received in the NHS with the potential of private medication. Slowly, the direness of Gill’s situation grows on his reader and, without any whingeing, he gains the sympathy he had earlier given to migrants. It is a reminder of the problems we have at home, as well as abroad, and from a man who many marvelled at for his meanness, it shows a cool compassion, not wallowing for himself, but for the system. As a denouement to Lines in the Sand, it is perfection, completing the collection’s journey and confirming Gill’s place at the pinnacle of journalistic skill. In the end, Gill was far more than a cranky critic; he was a voice for his age.