The WinStack
welcome
Dear Friends and Strangers,
I’ve joined the ‘Stack.
This will be a place you can follow my writing, music, podcast and various misadventures through 2023 and,
Insha’allah,
beyond.
Looking over my shoulder at 2022, I see a coherence when honestly, at the time, it felt like chaos. But isn’t that always the way.
I launched my podcast Marshall Matters with The Spectator. Twenty-two episodes with guests ranging from David Baddiel to James Dreyfus, Jordan Peterson to Helen Joyce. I have some fascinating new guests lined up for 2023.
You can find past and future episodes here:
Should you feel so inclined I hope you subscribe and follow.
The show was originally launched to explore taboo topics in the creative industries. I have since expanded to explore those topics in society more broadly as well as freedom of speech issues.
I’m astounded to see free speech in such peril. Especially in the US where it is embedded in the Bill of Rights. It is one of our few bulwarks against tyranny, so bringing attention to it seems to me to be important.
My last episode was with Sohrab Ahmari, a founder of Compact Magazine, who was an editor at the New York Post when they published and faced censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story. Free Speech is in crisis and I think that interview exemplifies why. Watch it here:
This will be a home for thoughts, insights and speeches from upcoming media and public speaking events.
Last year these ranged from BBC Question Time to the Battle of Ideas Festival. The former at which I got to call out Alistair Campbell on the Iraq War. The latter at which I came second place in a debate as to what was the greatest ever protest song. Second place, I note, with a song neither I nor anyone in attendance had ever heard, arguing that The Plastic People of The Universe were the catalyst for revolution in Czechoslovakia. When else had a band so directly influenced the course of history?
Not bad for a shitkicker banjo picker outta Mortlake.
2022 also saw my first solo tour of America. Evenings in-conversation and playing songs I’d written over the last fifteen years. In fact these were my first solo performances in over twenty years ( a performance of Help by The Beatles aged thirteen went so badly I spent the next two decades hiding behind bands). I’m looking at more gigs stateside this year. Stay chooooned…..
My ‘Stack will also be a place you can find music I’m making, for better or worse. Last year I released my first ever Christmas song ‘Rudolph’s Laptop’ with my buddy Ariel Pink. The A.I. art video, directed by KingCon2k11, got us into all the right sort of trouble. Have a watch -
This Substack will also be a home for my writing, in all its variegated guises.
Last year my essays were published in The Spectator, The Jewish Chronicle and on Bari Weiss’ Substack (now The Free Press), three publications I hold in high regard.
Last week I covered the Canadian free speech scandal of Jordan Peterson vs The College of Psychologists of Ontario which you can read here:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/in-defence-of-jordan-peterson/
I hope that this page can also be a place I will learn from you - please share interviewee ideas, important stories and feedback on my work. Constructive criticism always welcome. Destructive criticism welcome too, so long as its amusing.
Happy New Year and thanks for reading.
Here’s hoping you’ll still be reading this time next year,
Winston Marshall
It is reassuring to see that you have dropped quickly into a new career after being 'cancelled'. Best of luck with the pod and writing.
Wishing you all the best, Winston! I love your work.