About Bill Emmott
Global View is a newsletter by me, Bill Emmott, former editor in chief of The Economist, about what interests and provokes me in global affairs, with a special emphasis on Japan and Italy. I particularly enjoy trying to explain events and trends in those two fascinating but enigmatic countries to myself, and thus to readers.
Yet I also can’t resist trying to analyse broader trends in the world, especially in Asia, Europe and the US, and occasionally blowing off steam about them (hopefully in a measured and even polite way, of course). Since You Know Who re-occupied the White House the blowing off of steam has become an important therapy as well as meeting a vital need to explain, expose and challenge. As the quotation apparently frequently misattributed to Edmund Burke says, “the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”.
As to my special emphases I have been writing about and regularly visiting Japan for the past 43 years since I was posted there by The Economist; I have been writing about and regularly visiting Italy for roughly the past 25 years, ever since a confrontation between The Economist, me and Silvio Berlusconi in 2001 (the then Italian prime minister called us “the E-Communist” and pointed out that I look like Lenin) turned me from an outside observer into an addict.