‘And everybody there had been to university. That gave me a right pain.’

Julie Burchill and the demise of Modern Review:

It is at this point that I feel duty-bound to remind her of what she had so enthusiastically co-founded: an analytical magazine, fixated on the likes of Arnie and The Simpsons, edited by an Oxford graduate.

‘Consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind,’ Burchill suggests. ‘I thought it was time for a bit of change. Lesbian sex, Christian conversion… I’ll use any excuse.’ (…)

Underlying the magazine’s demise was one aspect of what Young sees as its success:

‘Within a few years, all the broadsheets were duplicating what the Modern Review was doing. With the Sunday Times, that was actually quite conscious. The culture section was modelled on the Modern Review. And they poached our writers.’