Tom Newton Dunn – Favourite Things

Tom Newton Dunn is a broadcast and newspaper journalist. Since 2020, he has been Chief Political Commentator at Times Radio and hosts a show from 10 am to 1 pm on Sundays called “T&G.” He was the Political Editor at The Sun from 2009 to 2020, having previously worked for a decade as a defence journalist and foreign reporter. He is a columnist for the Evening Standard and lives in West Sussex.

These are a few of Tom Newton Dunn’s favourite things…

Arsenal 

I have been a fan since I was about eight years old. I was briefly a Tottenham Hotspurs fan for about four weeks, but thankfully I came back to my senses. My father was an Arsenal fan ever since the FA Cup Final in 1952, which Arsenal lost to Newcastle United. He listened to it on the wireless at prep school and decided to start supporting them. He converted me 39 years ago, and I have been going to games ever since, first at Highbury now at the Emirates stadium, where we are season ticket holders. It is less about the results and success, or lack off, for me: it is about belonging. When I am at the ground, I feel like I am with my tribe and have felt like that for as long as I can remember. There is almost no greater feeling in the world than standing up with 60,000 other people and celebrating a goal. All standing and cheering at the same moment in time for the same thing. I have missed that in the pandemic. 

Bowling to my sons in the village cricket net

I have two boys, a 12-year- old and a ten-year-old. Both of them are cricket-mad. In the last six months, we moved out of London down to West Sussex, and schools in the countryside are cricket-obsessed. My two sons have become obsessed. Every spare living minute they beg to go down to the local village cricket net. It is a fairly ropey old net, and the wicket in the net is flat, but the approach to it is downhill, so you have to run downhill to bowl and get a hell of a pace up. Bowling to them is unbridled joy, watching them progress as the summer goes on. It is a wonderful experience to watch your children mature and progress in front of your eyes, no matter what they are doing. It has got to the point that I really struggle to get them out these days. That might be their improving brilliance or just my declining power as a bowler.

The pursuit of power

This sounds quite grandiose, but by that, I mean chronicling the pursuit of power. It is what I do vast amounts of my waking hours and have done for close to twenty years. Being a political journalist means chronicling, observing, witnessing and talking to those who pursue power at the highest level; from MPs to ministers, prime ministers and presidents. It is a never-ending obsession for all political journalists, and it has to be – you have to be absolutely fascinated by what is often a grotesque spectacle of craven people obsessed with their own advancements and utterly convinced that they are smarter, cleverer, more devious than everyone else in the country. It is the most extraordinary profession. When they get it right, they can do extraordinary things, changing the world for the better, and when they get it wrong, they change things for the worse. It is an utter privilege to have a front-row seat to that. I don’t think the amusement of watching them climb up the pole and then slide back down has lessened at all in all my years; it is utterly beguiling, the best and the worst of humanity. 

My SAGE barista express coffee machine

One of the first discoveries you make when you leave London and move to deepest, darkest West Sussex is that there are no coffee shops, or if there are, they are very polite places where you can’t just go in, grab a triple shot Americano and leave. There’s no Caffè Nero, no Starbucks, definitely no Pret, and for someone whose regular commute for 25 years always started with a high powered takeaway coffee, I struggled. We, therefore, very quickly struck upon a solution – we’d make our own. My wonderful wife was kind enough to buy me a bean to cup SAGE coffee machine for my birthday, and it is utterly life-changing. Every morning I make the most incredible coffee. This machine is so good; it is better than any coffee I have ever bought from anywhere in the world, to the point that I struggle to drink other coffee. We could never go back.

Dogs, the bigger the better

I love pretty much all dogs. I have always been a dog person, but as a child, I was never allowed them as I grew up in central London with a slab of concrete for a back garden. I am now the proud owner of my first ever dog Molly, who is seven years old. In animal years, she is the same age as me. She is a Parson Russell, a Jack Russell with long legs. She is entirely white with tiny black spots on her ears, and she was the runt of the litter. No one wanted her, but we did, and she is a wonderful companion. She is good-tempered, loyal, loving and follows me everywhere in a slightly needy fashion. I am fighting a firm battle for dog number two as we speak; I would like a Hungarian vizsla as I am half-Hungarian on my mother’s side. I am yet to win the battle, but I’m not giving up.

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