Caroline's editors

“Caroline Phillips is a tenacious and skilful writer with a flair for high quality interviewing and a knack for making things work.”

“Caroline Phillips has great contacts, good ideas, is a quick and accurate reporter and a writer with flair.”

“I have long been an admirer of Caroline Phillips’ journalism. She invariably has something worthwhile to say, a clever angle, a sharp turn of phrase. And warmth. A good combination.”

“Caroline and dullness are mortal enemies. She sees the interest in people and stories and her writing adds interest to the interest - this is the stuff that people will pay for.”

“Caroline is a very experienced and highly regarded writer. We're always delighted to have her byline in the magazine.  She is thorough and professional, and writes with feeling and maturity.”

Letters etc

“I greatly enjoyed your Lorne Thyssen piece - as well as being tickled to read that he propositioned you. Does this mean his therapy for moral degeneracy must be considered a failure?”

“Caroline writes really well. I like the way she gives the impression of herself at the scene without bringing herself in obtrusively. Very clever. Norman Mailer sounds as dreadful as I’d always imagined...”

“I must commend you for having the guts to stand up to that arrogant bully Norman Mailer who usually cows interviewers to such an extent that they treat him with kid gloves...”

“What a tour de force to have jigsawed so brilliantly a whole complicated lifetime into a delightful and very kind article...”

“I think you captured me very accurately. The talent you have for this (and it is a real talent) is exceptional. Had I not known otherwise, I’d have guessed you’d done a bit of time yourself!!!...”

On Caroline

“My fragrant colleague Caroline Phillips was delighted to learn yesterday that Justice Michael Davies, the libel judge presiding over the case of Andrew Neil's relationship with Pamella Bordes, is a student of her matchless prose. Justice Davies asked Neil the meaning of the phrase “ageing bimbette”, which he had read in an article written by Miss Phillips in this paper last May. Neil (who defines bimbo as “a very attractive young woman who isn’t terribly bright”) agreed with His Lordship that the phrase should have been “ageing bimbo”, implying that the use of the diminutive in this paper was incorrect. “I am not responsible for the quality of journalists on the Evening Standard,” he added tartly. However, no less an authority than Dr Robert Burchfield, former chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionaries, has decreed that Miss Phillips is right and Neil wrong. I feel bound to quote his ruling in full: “‘Bimbette’ is quite acceptable; it is similar to ‘whizzette’, ‘flatette’ and ‘hypette’. ‘Bimbette’ is quite a natural and rather chic word, without which the world would be a more boring place.” Quite.”

“Miss Phillips got one of the stories of the year... [she] certainly knows how to get her subjects to talk... Can a leading abortionist ever have been so candid in public about his grisly trade? It is as though Miss Phillips has shone the light more brightly than it has ever been shone before on practises which most of us would rather not think about.”

“He had greatly admired an Evening Standard article with Caroline Phillips with some pit bull owners. “A very fine piece of writing, I thought,” said Baker. “She managed to show them up for what they were, without actually calling them any abusive words at all. It accords with Dryden’s great definition of satire and that is to ‘take off a man's head and leave him standing’.””

“In an article entitled Unkind Words in the Sunday Times Magazine, erstwhile editor Brian MacArthur wrote about provocative copy and how the barbed celebrity interview was back in fashion, and selected Caroline Phillips as one of the country's six leading inquisitors. ‘Will they be kind or will they be cruel? Bylines that have made the famous nervous, sometimes with good cause,’ was the picture caption alongside a photograph of Caroline and the country's other top interviewers.”