Robert Wright
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reporterrwright.ft.com
Robert Wright
@reporterrwright.ft.com
Newsroom reporter at the Financial Times, clergy spouse, rider of bicycles.

"I just wanted to see something new every day and tell a story with it": Gus Haynes.
Sorry, self checkout voice. It’s worse than you think. I crave approval constantly, not just when I pay.
November 27, 2025 at 8:05 PM
November 27, 2025 at 12:16 AM
This is my son being sworn in (a decade ago) as a "junior park ranger" of the Rocky Mountain National Park. On that trip, we visited three US national parks. Those fees might have stopped us.
November 26, 2025 at 11:08 AM
This lost item hanging by the Roehampton Gate of Richmond Park suggests that somewhere is starting its employees unhealthily young.
November 9, 2025 at 5:54 PM
It’s funny, isn’t it, the casual lies we grow used to accepting:
November 7, 2025 at 11:40 AM
It’s my birthday and my son has elected to illustrate my age transition in model railway locomotives.
November 1, 2025 at 9:16 PM
October 22, 2025 at 9:20 PM
October 22, 2025 at 9:20 PM
Incidentally, Alpha Wong, quoted at the top of the piece, yesterday sent me a couple of adverts put out in Hong Kong to promote the BNO passport before the handover. One can see why people thought they were a guarantee:
October 22, 2025 at 9:36 AM
A text allegedly from a UK government department from a Philippines number, asking me to apply by last week for an allowance for which I’m ineligible? Yes, of course you can have all my details.
October 21, 2025 at 11:38 AM
I’ve just cycled in persistent, drizzly rain from Brixton to St Pancras on roads made extra treacherous by leaf mulch. My question is this: how much did Big Autumn have to pay Keats to rebrand this the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”?
October 20, 2025 at 8:10 AM
Here he is in our flat in Budapest about a year before he died:
October 17, 2025 at 10:52 AM
Elevation profile:
October 3, 2025 at 7:33 AM
Safely home:
October 2, 2025 at 6:47 PM
I’m lunching at the top of Box Hill after 57.3 miles of the #BoxHill100, after the fourth climb of the hill. I got chatting to an older couple who gave me £20 for SDCAS. “There but for the grace of God go I,” the woman said of the asylum seekers.
October 2, 2025 at 1:09 PM
First ascent of Box Hill completed on the #BoxHill100, with 24.3 miles down.
October 2, 2025 at 8:52 AM
This, incidentally, is the route. I'll ride from home to Walton-on-the-Hill, then six times round the 11-mile loop at the bottom:
September 29, 2025 at 1:18 PM
I went out this afternoon to reconnoitre the route. It turns out I’d remembered every thrilling, sweeping descent and forgotten some of the brutal climbs.
I’m a bit nervous. Let’s see how next Saturday’s #BoxHill100 goes.
September 27, 2025 at 6:24 PM
From the superb family sonnets:
September 27, 2025 at 12:14 PM
Many, many aspects of the British state aren’t working. But the inability to manage fly-tipping seems emblematic. This was Beddlestead Lane in the North Downs today. The white you can see I the distance is the waste at the next passing place. At the bottom of the hill, there’s a burned out car.
September 20, 2025 at 6:05 PM
During the past week, some patriot has expressed his or her #legitimateconcerns by putting St George’s Flags and Union Flags on lampposts at Elmers End Green, 10 miles from Trafalgar Square. Has anyone seen any closer to central London?
September 20, 2025 at 5:56 PM
Honestly, scammers, you might get on better trying someone who has at some point owned a car.
September 20, 2025 at 10:39 AM
Facebook keeps showing me these Young's adverts encouraging people to watch the women's rugby world cup in their pubs. All of them feature someone holding a rugby ball.

Please be aware that when watching sport on television it is absolutely NOT NECESSARY to bring equipment for actually playing it.
September 16, 2025 at 1:07 PM
But he'd already made the most memorable possible final exit many, many years ago:
September 16, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Boringly, now corrected:
September 15, 2025 at 10:54 AM