How Columnist Marina Hyde Became Britain’s Chronicler-In-Chief

The U.K. is in the stifling, sweaty grips of a historic heatwave, but in the library of The Standard in London, a fire is roaring. It’s a slightly bemusing choice, but then, so is the hotel’s book arrangement—take the “Politics” section, which is housed next to “Tragedy.” “It’s not the classic Dewey Decimal system is it,” deadpans Marina Hyde, 48, surveying the room as she settles into a leather armchair in front of “Environmental Sciences” and “Despair.”

As settings go, it feels a little on-the-nose for a meeting with, arguably, the country’s foremost living satirist, one who—through Brexit, four Tory prime ministers, Trump, and a global pandemic, via narcissistic celebrities, evil billionaires, disgraced princes, and, of course, spineless politicians—has become the chief chronicler of our stranger-than-fiction times.

Twice a week since 2016, Hyde’s dispatches for The Guardian have become the first stop for anyone looking for comedic peace of mind in a mind-bending news cycle. And, it turns out, there are many (her most popular columns can amass over a million page views). The hellscape has proved the making of Hyde. Her Twitter following has ballooned to almost half a million, with everyone from Grayson Perry and Gary Lineker to Phoebe Waller-Bridge among her devoted readers (“the most lethal, vital, screamingly funny truth-teller of our time” is how the latter describes her). Elton John—who’d previously threatened legal action against Hyde for a spoof diary entry she’d written—recently called her up to let her know how much he’d been enjoying her work. “Total mensch,” she grins.

A “mad fever dream” is how she describes the past six years when we meet to talk about her upcoming book, What Just Happened?!, which brings together many of her most electric columns into a handy single volume. Split into chapters grouping political events by year, interspersed with others on celebrity and sport, it will offer, as Hyde explains in the introduction, a “record of an era in which… it often seemed like the U.K. had tumbled down a rabbit hole.”

“I have to say, I’ve been rather lucky to be paid to write my way through it,” Hyde says, sipping on a lemonade. “Because it has been total chaos. People do tell you to write down your feelings in a journal, mine just happens to be public.”