Abigail Lebrecht · Public domain

A British music journalist and author who built his reputation covering the people and institutions of classical music rather than reviewing concerts, most visibly through his long-running Slipped Disc blog. His 2019 book Genius and Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947 was a significant work of social history, and his novel The Song of Names won a 2002 Whitbread Award and was adapted into a feature film. In 2026 the BBC ended its working relationship with him after pianist Yuja Wang publicly accused him of misogynistic bullying, a dispute that is contested but seriously documented.