“You fucking bastard. Look what you’ve done to my ship!” It wasn’t the normal way to address one’s superior aboard a British Royal Navy cruiser, especially when the man being abused was a freshly knighted rear admiral.

But these were exceptional circumstances. It was April 30th 1942, the height of World War II, and HMS Edinburgh – the flagship of rear admiral Sir Stuart Bonham Carter, which was under the command of the effing and blinding Captain Hugh Faulkner – had just taken a direct hit from a German U-boat.

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It used to be that the degeneration of online comments threads was measured by how many posts it took before someone would make a comparison with Adolf Hitler (see Godwin’s law). In DG #29 we noted that Brexit seems to reaching a similar level of ubiquity in digital discourse in the UK.

The infographic below illustrates the extent to which Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union has saturated public consciousness — hover over the image to find out how many comments it takes before the B-word crops up in completely unrelated discussions… Read More

On 1st October 2017, the US suffered the worst mass shooting in its history. Stephen Paddock fired into the crowd at the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel, killing 58 people and injuring 422.

In DG#29 we looked back at the atrocity and mapped the trail of destruction left by mass shootings across the US in 2017.

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The next issue of Delayed Gratification, to be published in June, represents a milestone for us. It’s our 30th issue, and to mark the occasion we’re treating the magazine to a bit of a makeover. We’re keeping some exciting changes under wraps for the time being, but we can now exclusively reveal our new masthead (above)! Whaddaya mean it looks exactly like the old one? OK, so it’s only a small change, but aficionados of serifs and ligatures might appreciate the cosmetic tweaks applied by our art director Christian Tate. We spoke to Christian about how the DG masthead has evolved over the past seven and a half years.

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Nic Cameron & Emily Johnson are the founders of Hartland on Hudson, a beautiful espresso bar and stationery store in upstate New York. Located in the hamlet of Leeds, close to the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains, the store offers a carefully curated collection of magazines including Delayed Gratification. We spoke to Emily about their move out of Brooklyn and their favourite publications…

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Over the past 25 years, the Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction award has shone an annual spotlight on novelists fumbling for words, elevating awkward euphemisms into hilarious, award-winning awkward euphemisms. In DG #29 we celebrated this unlikely literary phenomenon with our favourite fleshly flourishes from the past decade…
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How do you solve a problem like Korea? It’s a question that’s thwarted world leaders and diplomats ever since the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 established the North Korean state as a permanent outlier in global politics. Amid the nuclear jingoism and bewildering diplomacy, we’ve done our best to provide context on the country and its conflict with the world beyond its militarised border…

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Last Thursday evening saw the DG team, guest speakers and readers gather at the London College of Communication in London to launch the new issue of Delayed Gratification in style. After drinks in a hastily constructed infographics gallery, we previewed four stories from DG #29 onstage.

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In DG #29 we snatched a glimpse into the world of high-stakes salvage operations, meeting deep-sea adventurers who seek their fortunes at the bottom of the oceans. How easy is it to strike it rich on the hunt for sunken treasure? It’s a race to the bottom…

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On 21st November, Robert Mugabe stepped down as Zimbabwe’s leader after 37 years in power, prompting celebrations throughout the country.

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In DG #29, we interviewed photojournalist and filmmaker Emmanuel Rondeau, who spent several years on the trail of big cats to see how they are surviving in changing habitats.

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The phenomenon of ‘fake news’, a term named word of the year by Collins Dictionary in 2017 due to its “ubiquitous presence” since Donald Trump’s arrival on the political scene, seems to have undermined the public’s trust in journalists. One person trying to tackle this problem is Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who recently launched a news website with a uniquely collaborative editorial and business model. We spoke to the American web entrepreneur about his plans…

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