This is not a recommendation to buy the Spectator. Most of the views of the contributors on Rod Liddle can be found on social media. Michael Gove states that Liddle must be compared to Orwell and Swift as a great writer and indeed satirist.
The Guardian’s Obituary provides a corrective
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/aug/04/rod-liddle-obituary?CMP=share_btn_url
Zoe Williams has also written in the Guardian
For eulogies Boris Johnson (on Twitter obviously) has posted this:
Heartsick at the death of Rod Liddle – an outrageously funny and gifted writer with a beautiful conversational style. He had a unique talent for finding the thing that was obviously true but supposedly unsayable and then saying it with such panache as to give the maximum possible offence – and to all the right people. Spectator readers absolutely loved him.
Michael Gove, The Spectator’s editor, said: “Rod Liddle was a journalist of genius. In the tradition of Swift, Cobbett and Orwell, he was a satirist who found society’s most sensitive spots and made merciless fun of our follies.
Peter Oborne’s opposing view
Rod Liddle played the politics of hatred – we should be honest about his legacy | Middle East Eye
When I knew Liddle on Teesside in the second half of the 1970s, he was then a socialist punk, I recall him as personable and amiable. Looking at the many comments after his death was reported from those who knew him more recently, it seems that on occasion he retained those elements of his character. Clearly also on many occasions he did not…
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