Josh Glancy

A great newspaper feature should have unique access, fascinating revelation and address some form of moral conflict. This selection of features from Josh Glancy has all three in abundance. Glancy's writing is in the finest traditions of The Sunday Times: vivid, witty, humane and balanced. These pieces all wrestle with difficult questions: should humans slaughter foxes? Why are Israel and Palestine trapped in a cycle of violence? What was Qatar's real motivation for hosting the World Cup? - while also entertaining and enlightening the reader, taking them behind the scenes and into a world they otherwise would not see. They are written with pace and acuity and each had a powerful impact.

Face to face with the West Bank:

In January, a round of troubling violence broke out in Israel and the West Bank that was an ominous foreshadow of the war that has now broken out. In a superb piece of reporting, Glancy visited two homes of mourning in Jerusalem and Jenin, hearing from bereaved families about their lost children and parents. It is a searing article, deservedly put on the front page, that captures the despair, fury and intractability of the conflict that has now been plunged into one of its darkest chapters. “Something dangerous is rising in the Holy Land,” Glancy wrote. Sadly his words proved all too true.

Meet the urban foxhunters:

More and more, it feels as though foxes are everywhere in British cities. But many readers were surprised to find out that they are regularly slaughtered in people’s suburban gardens by trained marksmen. Glancy embedded with one of these shooters, a man who kills up to 30 foxes in a night but also keeps a pet fox - Charlie - at home, and through him told a fascinating and arresting story about Britain’s long and tortured relationship with the fox, an animal we love, and love to hate. This made a beautiful magazine cover and became the definitive treatment of the issue.

Forget virtue signalling: this World Cup is a magnet for deals in the desert

The 2022 World Cup in Doha represented a landmark moment in both football and world politics. Glancy provided the definitive coverage of what the tournament looked like behind the scenes, as shifting geopolitics, headers and hedonism combined to startling effect. In this fascinating piece, he ranged expertly from cigars with US politicians and Qatari diplomats to watching Saudi Arabia stun Argentina with sheikhs in the "Pearl Lounge" at the Lusail Stadium. The article took readers behind the velvet rope and expertly explained why Qatar wanted the tournament so much, and the hard-nosed realpolitik behind their project. Glancy's reporting here combined extraordinary access, vivid description and piercing insight.

Taken together, these features represent the very best of newspaper feature writing. They are courageous and eloquent, taking readers to places they would otherwise never go, making the world more explicable and leaving them both entertained and informed. This is exemplary work.