Journalism

As fine and thoughtful a theatre critic as you will find anywhere,” Michael Marshall, Managing Editor, The World & I, US monthly magazine.

For nearly two decades, John Elsom was the principal theatre critic and contributing arts editor of The World And I, the Washington-based monthly magazine that brought together writing on culture, science, politics, and the arts for an international readership. His reviews and essays ranged across the major festivals of Europe and America, offering a comparative perspective on world theatre that was rarely found in British publications of the time.

During the 1960s, Elsom wrote regularly on theatre for The London Magazine, then under the editorship of poet and cricket correspondent Alan Ross. Founded in 1732 and counting among its contributor figures from Samuel Johnson to Dylan Thomas, the magazine was the forum where London’s literary and cultural life was argued over with the greatest seriousness. John’s pieces captured a decade of extraordinary change in British theatre, the aftermath of the Royal Court revolution, the rise of the fringe, the last years of the Lord Chamberlain’s censorship.

One of Britain’s oldest and most respected journals of opinion, Contemporary Review was founded in 1866 and counted Ruskin, Gladstone, and Aldous Huxley among its contributors. Elsom wrote for the magazine throughout the 1980s which was a decade of upheaval in the British cultural policy contributing up to six articles a year on theatre, arts, and the politics of culture. His essays fed directly into Liberal Party arts policy debates and were widely reprinted internationally.