It’s possible Evgeny Lebedev’s only crime is absurdity. Perhaps his editors could let us know
20.03.2022 - 04:01
/ msn.com
Evgeny Lebedev in one of the newspapers he owns with his father, Alexander, the former Russian spy. “I am not a security risk to this country, which I love.
”And for once, the sheer preposterousness of Lord Evgeny, the most elaborately costumed proprietor in press history, is on his side. Perhaps it’s reading too much John le Carré, but are serious security risks also likely to be party-mad showoffs, enthralled by celebrities, with titles that sound – “Baron Lebedev, of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond on Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation” – as if they were dreamed up by a rather worrying 10-year-old? Though in that respect it might shed some light on an affinity sometimes considered suspect between Lord Siberia and the no less preposterous world king, Boris Johnson, whose determination to ennoble Lebedev has now embarrassed both.
Is it impossible that Tuscan parties featuring celebrities and (Rory Stewart was told) “girls”, might, for such men, represent the pinnacle of human achievement?The similarities don’t stop there. Johnson thinks it stylish to flourish the classics; Lebedev was accessorised with De Profundis and Areopagitica for an appearance at the Leveson inquiry, an early signal of his claim, now endorsed by a Russian winner of the Nobel peace prize, to be called a press “freedom fighter”.
Back in 2012 Lebedev tweeted: “Forgot to tell Leveson that it’s unreasonable to expect individuals to spend £millions on newspapers and not have access to politicians. ”Both men like posing with their dogs, have fathers who hit people, and with their shared weakness for costly furnishings we can picture them pricing whatnots with the same fervour they bring to discussing Putin’s annexation of Crimea
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