Charlotte Higgins and Alan Rusbridger make sweet music

 
2 January 2014

Guardian Books has commissioned Charlotte Higgins to write the inside scoop on the BBC’s disastrous past two years — but the decision to ask the paper’s chief arts reporter to pen the story has raised an eyebrow.

Higgins is a classicist not a media expert. Her previous books have included works on ancient Greece, Latin love lessons and Under Another Sky, a book about Roman Britain that was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction.

So why has the author of It’s All Greek To Me rather than one of the Guardian Media team been given a sabbatical by editor Alan Rusbridger to investigate the Beeb’s recent scandals and discover how the corporation is going to withstand pressure from an increasingly hostile Tory party as it renegotiates its royal charter and licence fee?

Higgins and Rusbridger are friends who share a love of classical music. She plays the violin, he the piano. Sometimes they even play together.

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