Toby Young

Toby Young is a high-flying British journalist, author of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, the tale of his disastrous five-year attempt to make it in the U.S. as a contributing editor at Conde Naste's Vanity Fair magazine. His style of obnoxious wit has earned him almost as many enemies as admirers.

Young's father was Michael Young, sociologist, politician and member of the House of Lords. His mother was the novelist, sculptor and painter Sasha Moorsom. He was educated at Oxford, Harvard and Cambridge universities. At Oxford he started a magazine named The Danube, discovering his interest in journalism. After university he joined The Times but was sacked after six months. He then left for Harvard as a Fulbright scholar, encountering Graydon Carter's satrical Spy magazine there.

Returning to London, Young founded and edited The Modern Review with Julie Burchill, with its motto "low culture for highbrows". It caused a sensation in the publishing and celebrity worlds. In 1995, with the magazine close to financial ruin, Young decided to close The Modern Review. The decision led to a fierce public battle with Burchill and her lover, Charlotte Raven, a writer at the magazine, who accused him of being a spoiled child and compared him to Hitler.

Young moved to New York shortly afterwards to work for Graydon Carter at Vanity Fair. His book outlines his struggles for his ideas to get noticed, the self-absorbed world of Young and his fellow staffers and his many faux-pas at the expense of the rich, famous and powerful.

Back in London now, Young is theatre critic at The Spectator, also writes for Tatler and is a columnist and broadcaster. He has performed in the West End in a stage adaptation of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.

External links

• Personal website