Julie Burchill goes on sabbatical to study God
-09/02/06
Julie Burchill has announced
Julie Burchill goes on sabbatical to study God
-09/02/06
Julie Burchill has announced she is to take a break from journalism to study God.
The journalist – who made her name as a “hip young gunslinger” on the NME (New Musical Express) in the 1970s and once professed to look back on her cocaine-taking years with affection – has said she will take a gap year to study theology, reports the Guardian newspaper.
Burchill said she would take up her studies after an “extended sabbatical” this year from her Saturday column at the Times, during which she would finish two books and three television programmes.
“As I have now been a journalist for a whopping 30 years without a break, I see this as the nearest I have ever had to a gap year, and am very much enjoying it,” Burchill said.
“Next year, if these contracts are completed, I am very much hoping to do no work whatsoever, but simply to study theology and go on holiday a lot.”
Burchill, who is considering what religious course to study, is also launching an independent TV ideas company called Dumbass Inc, with the Daily Mail journalist Sara Lawrence, which will specialise in selling reality TV concepts to production companies.
She is also completing a sequel to Sugar Rush, her lesbian teen novel, and will write a non-fiction book about her adopted home town of Brighton.
In the 1980s Burchill styled herself as “Queen of the Groucho club”, synonymous with a high-living lifestyle, before co-founding the trendsetting Modern Review magazine with Toby Young. They had a bitter falling out later.
She had five controversial years at the Guardian before moving to the Times, where her first column two years ago talked about her conversion to Christianity. “One moment I was sitting there on my Bloomsbury sofa, flicking through Time Out, idly wondering whose life to ruin next, and the next moment it was as if a mighty hand had broken – painlessly, patiently, purposefully – a huge jar of ointment over my head,” she wrote.
The Times said it had dropped Burchill’s Saturday column in favour of a more flexible arrangement.
“Julie still writes for the Times,” a spokeswoman for the paper said. “The only thing that has changed is that she’s going to be writing more for the weekday paper than the Saturday paper as we wanted to give her more flexibility to write on topical news issues.”
Julie Burchill goes on sabbatical to study God
-09/02/06
Julie Burchill has announced she is to take a break from journalism to study God.
The journalist – who made her name as a “hip young gunslinger” on the NME (New Musical Express) in the 1970s and once professed to look back on her cocaine-taking years with affection – has said she will take a gap year to study theology, reports the Guardian newspaper.
Burchill said she would take up her studies after an “extended sabbatical” this year from her Saturday column at the Times, during which she would finish two books and three television programmes.
“As I have now been a journalist for a whopping 30 years without a break, I see this as the nearest I have ever had to a gap year, and am very much enjoying it,” Burchill said.
“Next year, if these contracts are completed, I am very much hoping to do no work whatsoever, but simply to study theology and go on holiday a lot.”
Burchill, who is considering what religious course to study, is also launching an independent TV ideas company called Dumbass Inc, with the Daily Mail journalist Sara Lawrence, which will specialise in selling reality TV concepts to production companies.
She is also completing a sequel to Sugar Rush, her lesbian teen novel, and will write a non-fiction book about her adopted home town of Brighton.
In the 1980s Burchill styled herself as “Queen of the Groucho club”, synonymous with a high-living lifestyle, before co-founding the trendsetting Modern Review magazine with Toby Young. They had a bitter falling out later.
She had five controversial years at the Guardian before moving to the Times, where her first column two years ago talked about her conversion to Christianity. “One moment I was sitting there on my Bloomsbury sofa, flicking through Time Out, idly wondering whose life to ruin next, and the next moment it was as if a mighty hand had broken – painlessly, patiently, purposefully – a huge jar of ointment over my head,” she wrote.
The Times said it had dropped Burchill’s Saturday column in favour of a more flexible arrangement.
“Julie still writes for the Times,” a spokeswoman for the paper said. “The only thing that has changed is that she’s going to be writing more for the weekday paper than the Saturday paper as we wanted to give her more flexibility to write on topical news issues.”