Shock of the News: Confessions of a Troublemaker

by Jonathan Miller

'[An] insider's account.' Ian Burrell, i-Paper'A bare-knuckle read.' Andrew NeilRazor-sharp and wity, Jonathan Miller pulls back the curtain on how Murdoch won and lost the media crown, and why this is important for the looming AI revolution in this rollicking memoir. Rupert Murdoch's tech guru and disruptor-in-chief, Jonathan was also the founder of UK's first news site, a war reporter in Kosovo, and commentator on the follies of both France and rural Britain. Bound to amuse and spark debate, including why wokism is not news!

221 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 14, 2025

About the author

Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE was a British theatre and opera director, author, television presenter, humorist and sculptor. Trained as a physician in the late 1950s, he first came to prominence in the 1960s with his role in the comedy review Beyond the Fringe with fellow writers and performers Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett. Despite having seen few operas and not knowing how to read music, he began stage-directing them in the 1970s and became one of the world's leading opera directors with several classic productions to his credit. His best-known production is probably his 1982 "Mafia"-styled Rigoletto set in 1950s Little Italy, Manhattan. He was also a well-known television personality and familiar public intellectual in the UK and US.

Reviews

[Richard]

Chatty and often catty, dishy and disagreeable, contrarian and curmudgeonly. A provocateur who seems to have known much of London’s journalism establishment, from Rupert Murdoch on down, and who died too soon.

(Disclaimer, I am friends with his daughter, who gave me a copy of the book. I never met Jonathan.)