Alison Kervin

Alison Kervin is a novelist and former sports editor of the Mail on Sunday.

Thursday

Alison Kervin

Why Trump can’t be stopped

From our UK edition

36 min listen

This week: can anyone stop Trump?  The Spectator’s deputy editor Freddy Gray takes a look at Trump's ‘second coming’ in his cover story. He says that despite Trump’s legal troubles, he is almost certain to receive the Republican nomination. Freddy joins the podcast alongside Amber Duke, who also writes in the magazine this week about the brides of trump: the women hoping to receive the nod as his running mate. Also this week: the old trope is that there is nothing more ex than an ex prime minister, but what about an ex MP?

Alison Kervin

Why I self-publish my books

From our UK edition

Trying to publish a book used to be straightforward. You came up with an idea, spent months, if not years, writing it, then sent it off to an agent or publisher who rejected it by return. Life was simpler back then. We all knew where we were. Rejection wasn’t necessarily based on the quality of the work. Literature is a subjective business. Lord of the Flies earned William Golding 20 rejections. James Joyce, Jack Kerouac and Joseph Heller suffered similar fates. Marcel Proust was rejected so many times that he decided to pay for publication himself. The much-repeated industry statistic is between 1 and 2 per cent of manuscripts are published. Those aren’t great odds. What do you do? I’ll tell you exactly what: publish it yourself.

Tuesday

Alison Kervin

Joey Barton doesn’t know anything about women in sport 

From our UK edition

Joey Barton – the Pied Piper of disaffected football fans – has had a busy week. He began by comparing female football commentators to Fred and Rose West, the serial killers who murdered 12 young women. He then went on to imply that female commentators had slept their way to the top. It would be unwise to take Barton too seriously. It’s long been the chosen road of the deeply insecure man to attack confident women. I’ve worked in sport all my life. And throughout it I’ve faced opposition from the small-minded, although never from the stars themselves or the people who matter. It’s always the man in the county blazer with his many chins resting on a grubby collar who mutters about the good ol’ days when women clutched frying pans instead of microphones.