From TCS to The Telegraph: An Interview with Tristram Fane Saunders

Oliver Cooney interviews the former TCS Editor who talks music, poetry, and sleepless nights at Cambridge.

Tristram Saunders

When asking Tristram if he had always considered a career in journalism, the question was barely half asked when he began to nod. “When I was a kid,” he began, reminiscing about his childhood spent reading Nintendo Magazine, “my dream job would be to write for Game Boy magazine and get free games. As a teenager, it was that for NME. My dream would be to get free albums and write about music.”

While neither Game Boy nor NME have taken him up on his offer yet, Tristram Fane Saunders has certainly landed himself a dream job in journalism as a commissioning editor for the culture desk at The Telegraph. There, he writes on everything from poetry to stand-up comedy, though music journalism was where his love for reporting was born. He tells me via Zoom of a music reviewing blog he started in secondary school, where he “set up interviews with tiny indie bands from Derby that nobody had heard of.” Tristram defends  his amateur journalism days, encouraging budding writers to follow suit.: “Get your work published anywhere you can. If you’re struggling to find places to publish it, make a blog; find two friends and it’s not a blog, it’s an online magazine.”

Tristram carried this passion for music journalism with him to Cambridge, where he studied English at Peterhouse. There, he became music editor and eventually Editor-in-Chief of The Cambridge Student. As he tells me this, recounting also his extensive Camdram credits, an email from my dissertation supervisor chimes in reminding me of the reading I am still yet to do, and with that I am pressed to ask how he managed all this alongside his degree.

“With the English degree, there’s a lot of reading. I’d either have time to write the essay or read the books the essay was about. That meant a lot of very shallow skim reading and a lot of even shallower bluffing.” An almost crazed look twinkles in his eye as he discusses his final year: “I didn’t sleep Wednesdays for most of a year.” With the newspaper going to print at midnight on a Wednesday, and an essay on Italian literature due every Thursday, he recounts how he would return home at half-past midnight, rub his tired eyes, and sit down to write the essay. “I would be holding this thing I had just printed out, and my supervisor would stop me every couple of sentences to say, ‘what exactly do you mean?’ and I would just melt into a pool of tears. I killed plenty of brain cells through sleep deprivation. Advice to the readers – don’t do that.”

Alongside journalism, Tristram is a poet, having recently published his first collection, Before We Go Any Further. “Like many socially awkward teenagers, I was in a terrible punk band,” he says, with a chuckle. When the band dispersed, he continued to write lyrics, which transformed into poems. From here, he began performing poetry across the South of England with Luke Rice, including at the Latitude festival in both 2011 and 2012.

His poetry blossomed at Cambridge, where he competed competing against other universities in performance poetry with the UniSlam team. The Cambridge team, having only just been established, “got absolutely trounced, every time, but there were some very good poets on the team.” A smile grows in his cheeks as he recounts how he met Forward prize winner, Phoebe Power, and Poetry World Slam Champion, Harry Baker.

His poetry has certainly changed since his performance days - , his  recent collection taking a more personal turn, including “more painful poems.” Pieces such as Monkfish or How the Raven Ate the Moon sparkle with sentimental details that strike an emotional chord. Though he cautions that not all the details are entirely accurate: “If the rhyme scheme means that brother would work better than sister, I’d happily turn my sister into a brother.”

Alongside emotional tales, Tristram packs his collection with references to Crystal Palace Park, situated near to his home. “The park is filled with so many odd objects – the giant dinosaur sculptures, the sphinx. They provide a way to make things feel more grounded… But there’s a fair bit of humour in my book. I don’t trust a book without any humour in the same way I wouldn’t trust a person who said they’ve never laughed.”

Tristram’s love for poetry has remained a staple in his career - he tells me an “ongoing highlight” in his journalism has been  writing The Telegraph’s weekly poetry column. Beyond this, he jokes about his recent trip to Paris to interview the dancers from the Moulin Rouge over champagne - “as you can imagine, incredibly difficult work.” Reviewing comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe and his viral interview with Pink Floyd bassist, Roger Waters also feature as fond memories from his work thus far.

I finish up the interview by asking for advice he would give to budding journalists. “Writing lots,” he says. “Having clippings you can show people and say ‘look, here are some things I’ve written.’ That’s more valuable than anything else.” Well, Tristram, here is a thing I have written. His optimism fuels me with the hope that many Cambridge writers share of following in his footsteps, be that in journalism, poetry, or in pulling an all-nighter for every supervision essay, and still coming out with a First.