Tom Overton

Writing John Berger's biography for Allen Lane the Penguin Press. Edited Portraits: John Berger on Artists, Landscapes: John Berger on Art and The Underground Sea: John Berger on Miners and the Miners' Strike. Off Twitter; [email protected] for Berger stuff.

Writing & Radio

'Libby Hall obituary', The Guardian, 7th September 2023.

'Losing Their Accent (and Getting it Back)', complicite.org.uk, September 2023.

'Alan Tanner obituary: leading Swiss filmmaker and John Berger collaborator', Sight and Sound, 23rd September 2022.

A Self Portrait by John Berger’ for Viewfinders: Ways of Seeing at 50, BBC Radio 4, 5th January 2022.

'Books of the Year', The White Review, December 2021. 

‘Necrography: The Year in the United Kingdom’, Biography, vol. 44, no. 1, 2021, pp. 161-167

'Atelier and Tugs at Dunkerque', in Alfred Cohen, An American Artist in Europe: Between Abstraction and Figuration, ed. Max Saunders & Sarah McDougall (London: Ben Uri/Alfred Cohen Foundation, 2020), pp. 56-59.

'Books of the Year', The White Review, December 2020.

'Words and Images: John Berger and Jean Mohr', Brick, no. 103, Summer 2019, pp. 65-73.

'After the Strike', London Review of Books Blog, 1st July 2019 [800 words.] 

'Plastic Emotions: an interview with Shiromi Pinto', Suite (212), Resonance 104.4FM, 1st July 2019.

'Vivian Maier: The Strangeness of Selves', frieze.com, 19th June 2019 [700 words]. 

'Sven Lindqvist obituary', The Guardian, 3rd June 2019 [800 words]. 

"The necessary disloyalty": The Year in the UK', Biography, University of Hawai'i Press, Volume 42, Number 1, 2019, pp. 154-161

'An interview with Xiaolu Guo', Suite (212), Resonance 104.4FM, 13th May 2019.

'Another Gaze: Feminist filmmaking and the work of Chantal Akerman', Suite (212), Resonance 104.4FM, 29th April 2019.

'Remember Oluwale', The London Review of Books Blog, 18th April 2019 [706 words]. 

'The Proletarian Answer to the Modernist Question', Suite (212), Resonance 104.4FM, 8th April 2019.

'Lande: the contemporary archaeology of the Calais Jungle', Suite (212), Resonance 104.4FM, 25th March 2019.

'Max Porter's Book Lanny evades easy categorization'frieze.com, 15th March 2019 [800 words]. 

'The Hollow Shore: an Interview with Gary Budden', Suite (212), Resonance 104.4FM, 25th February 2019.

'The Constructor': Fernand Léger at Tate Liverpool, Tribune, 7th February 2019 [900 words].

'Bomb Culture: Jeff Nuttall & 1960s Counterculture', Suite (212), Resonance 104.4FM, 2nd February 2019.

'A voice no-one wants to hear: confessions of an Amazon employee' [review, Heike Geissler, Seasonal Associate, tr. Katy Derbyshire], frieze.com, 29th January 2019 [900 words]. 

'An Interview with Markéta Luskačová', Suite (212), Resonance 104.4FM, 14th January 2019.

'Books of the Year', The White Review, 17th December 2018 [150 words].

'Cultural Review of the Year' Suite (212), Resonance 104.4FM, 17th December 2018. 

'Biodiversity for literature: an interview with Jessica J. Lee', Suite (212), Resonance 104.4FM, 10th December 2018.

'Jean Mohr obituary', The Guardian, 15th November 2018 [1,200 words].

'White Screens/Black Images: A conversation about black cinema', Suite (212), Resonance 104.4FM, 5th November 2018.

'New Suns: Magic, myth-making, occult poetry and 21st century feminism'Suite (212), Resonance 104.4FM, 29th October 2018.

'John Berger Would Have Been Appalled by a ‘Ways of Seeing’-Inspired Show Staged in Abu Dhabi', frieze.com, 26th September 2018 [1102 words].

'Against Creativity: an interview with Oli Mould',  Suite (212), Resonance 104.4FM, 24th September 2018.

'The Funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales 2.0', London Review of Books Blog, 10th September 2018 [792 words]. 

'Mechanics of Memory' [Review: Annie Ernaux, The Years, tr. Alison L. Strayer] New Humanist, vol. 133, no.3, Autumn 2018, p.70 [700 words].

'Beyond Boundaries: An Interview with Mike Dibb', Suite (212), Resonance 104.4FM, 16th July 2018.

'In Moscow', London Review of Books Blog, 17th May 2018 [736 words].

'At the Museum of Water', London Review of Books Blog, 29th March 2018 [695 words].

'‘High Society' at the Rijksmuseum: Gambling, Carousing and Clothes', frieze.com, 15th March 2018 [907 words].

'Literature in Translation', with Jen Calleja and Esther Leslie, Suite (212), Resonance 104.4FM, 15th March 2018.

'Identity Politics: The Year in the UK'Biography, Volume 40, Number 4, Fall 2017, pp. 672-679 [3000 words].

'Anya Berger (1923-2018)', frieze.com, 27th February 2018 [1025 words].

'John Berger on food', Observer Food Monthly, no. 201, February 2018, p.26 [210 words].

'Our Gusts and Storms': Ann Quin, frieze.com, 10th January 2018 [975 words].

'Books of the Year', The White Review, December 2017 [150 words].

'At Home in the World': on Daisy Hildyard & Andy Holden, frieze.com, 24th November 2017 [800 words].

'Duty Calls': Hito Steyerl, frieze.com, 26th October 2017 [1334 words].

'John Berger: Ways of Listening', BBC Radio 3 Sunday Feature, 23rd July 2017. 

'Oberhausen Film Festival', The White Review, 7th June 2017 [3327 words].

'Worst-case scenario: Threads (1984)', Paris Review Daily, 10th April 2017 [1690 words].

'Movement of Trade and Movement of People: The Year in the UK'Biography, Volume 39, Number 4, Fall 2016, pp. 667-73 [1884 words]. 

'Life in the margins: It’s time that the extraordinary life and work of Anya Berger was acknowledged', frieze.com, 27th February 2017 [1546 words]. 

'John Berger (1926-2017): Tom Overton reflects on the life of a great storyteller', frieze.com, 9th January 2017 [1518 words; March 2017 print edn., no.185, pp.116-17].

'Remembering John Berger', BBC Today Programme, 9th January 2017.

'Remembering John Berger', BBC World Service, 9th January 2017.

'John Berger - Marxist art critic and Booker Prize-winning novelist - obituary', The Telegraph, 3rd January 2017 [1770 words].

'John Berger at 90: The Verso Books Podcast in Collaboration with London Review of Books ', 31st October 2016. 

'We are all suffering equally': Oscar Wilde at Reading Gaol, Paris Review Daily, 20th September 2016 [1354 words].

'Oh God, what a blabbering mess!': on D. H. Lawrence and Bertrand Russell, Times Literary Supplement, 1st July 2016, pp. 17-19 [3,834 words].

'Extraordinary Rendition': Edmund Clark & Crofton Black, Paris Review Daily, 17th June 2016 [931 words].

'Broadcasting Felix': Mark Leckey, London Review of Books Blog, 2nd June 2016 [441 words].

'Steven Claydon: The Gilded Bough, Sadie Coles HQ' [review] Artforum, May 2016 [600 words].

'Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict by Austin Reed review – the first African American prison memoir', Guardian, 24th February 2016 [1,100 words].

Common Property 3: Urinal, Pipe, Balloon Dog’, Jerwood Visual Arts Blog, 15th February 2016 [1143 words]. 

Common Property 2: Fame and Money’, Jerwood Visual Arts Blog, 15th February 2016 [1224 words].

Common Property 1: SUPERFLEX and Tristram Shandy’, Jerwood Visual Arts Blog, 3rd February 2016 [1000 words]

‘Ted Hughes in Hebden Bridge’, London Review of Books Blog, 14th January 2016 [619 words].

What’s the Difference Between Looting and Collecting?’, London Review of Books Blog, 23rd December 2015 [596 words].

‘At Wembley': the Marseillaise after the Bataclan attacks, London Review of Books Blog, 18th November 2015 [654 words].

‘The 1939 Register: where did Britain sleep as war was declared?’, The New Statesman, 13–19th November 2015, p.16 [566 words].

‘I’d rather be there if I could’, Jerwood Visual Arts Blog, 9th October 2015 [1099 words].

‘Nationality Doubtful’: on Josef Koudelka, London Review of Books Blog, 29th September 2015 [590 words].

‘I seem very mixed up today: Notes on Three Works in the Jerwood Drawing Prize’, Jerwood Visual Arts Blog, 16th September 2015 [999 words].

John Berger on Henry Moore’, in Anne Wagner & Robert Sutton (eds.), Henry Moore: Sculptural Process and Public Identity, Tate, 2015 [7,962 words].

‘End Matter: Katrina Palmer Explores the Source of Portland Stone’, Apollo, 20th May 2015 [809 words].

‘Whaling Station during the Lunch-hour': on W. H. Auden & Louis MacNeice's Letters from Iceland, Various Small Fires, 18th May 2015 [1932 words].

Andrew Lacon at Division of Labour at Edel Assanti, London’, this is tomorrow, 12th May 2015 [500 words].

‘“The memory of the world”: British attempts to save endangered Middle Eastern artefacts’, New Statesman, 10th–16th April 2015, p.16. [621 words]

‘Plastic Words at Raven Row’, The White Review, [online exclusive] 1st March 2015 [3810 words].

‘What the strikes at the National Gallery tell us about Britain’, New Statesman,27th February – 5th March 2015, p.16 [581 words].

‘The story of the Haggerston Estate is the story of social housing in Britain’, CityMetric/New Statesman, 12th February 2015 [1085 words].

Interview with Douglas Coupland, The White Review, vol. 12, November 2014, pp. 137–49 [6021 words].

As if it were the only one’: The Story of John Berger’s Booker Prize for G.’ in Telling Stories: Essays on John Berger ed. Ralf Hertel & David Malcolm (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2015) [7531 words].

‘A Personal View’: Kenneth Clark, art criticism & autobiography, Apollo, vol. 179, no. 620, May 2014, pp. 68–71 [2434 words].

Interview with Geoff Dyer, The White Review, [online exclusive] 10th July 2014. [5781 words]

‘Keywords and Constellations at Tate Liverpool’, Apollo, 5th March 2014 [550 words].

‘Cécile B. Evans: AGNES Goes Live’, Apollo, 4th March 2014 [552 words].

‘Francis Bacon, Study for A Portrait 1952’, Tate website, January 2014 [881 words].

‘Francis Bacon, Figures in a Garden c.1936’, Tate website, January 2014 [790 words].

Art and Property Now’, OpenDemocracy, 5th–9th November 2012 [4000 words].

‘1972’, in Journal of Visual Culture: Ways of Seeing 40th Anniversary Issue, vol. 11, no. 2, August 2012, pp. 37–40 [1000 words].

‘The Company of the Past’, in John Berger: a cura di Maria Nadotti – Riga 32. With Geoff Dyer, Anne Michaels, Arundhati Roy, Simon McBurney, Katya Berger, Colum McCann, Salman Rushdie, et al. (Milan: Marcos y Marcos, 2012), pp. 237–44 [2,300 words].

'Harvesting the Archive', BBC Radio 3 Sunday Feature, 17th October 2010.

Agents

UK & everywhere else: [email protected]

North America: [email protected]