The Sunday Times Magazine • 31enrichment. By outing himself on the
“wrong” side of the culture wars, Marshall
— alumnus of the prestigious London
private school St Paul’s, son of the Brexit-
supporting hedge funder Paul Marshall
— appeared to have confirmed the worst
of these suspicions. And thanks to the
dynamics of a Twitter outrage cycle, the
fury of a few thousand keyboard warriors
fed through into the online media: the band
faced a withering assault and management
became anxious. It’s not as though
questions were being asked in parliament
about Marshall’s tweet, but in the close-knit
world of transatlantic pop music the band
came under intense pressure.
Marshall was dazed by the uproar. “Your
initial reaction is ‘I’m so sorry I’ve offended
you’,” he says. “I apologised because I felt
like maybe I don’t understand this topic
fully, and I need to understand it.” Marshall’s
bandmates, including the lead singer,
Marcus Mumford, who is married to the
actress Carey Mulligan, were far from
thrilled with the political firestorm that
threatened to engulf their careers. “They
were getting dragged under the bus with
me, that was a horrible experience for
them,” recalls Marshall, who says his initial
instinct was to protect his friends.
In the following weeks, however, he
questioned his decision to apologise. “As
I continued to research I felt more and more
that I’d participated in a lie,” he says. “That
really affected my conscience.” Marshall had
recently returned to practising Christianity
after a long hiatus and he began to worry
about the wellbeing of his soul. He returned
again and again to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s
essay Live Not by Lies, in which the Soviet
dissident enjoins his readers into “accepting
a life outside the mainstream, courageously
defending the truth, and being willing to
endure the consequences”.
Marshall struggled to sleep and lost
weight as he wrestled with his decision.
“Those few months between apologising
and quitting were psychologically very
traumatising,” he says. The more he thought
about it, the more he felt that his initial tweet
had been correct: he believed that Ngo was
indeed a courageous journalist seeking to
expose violence on the far left. Subsequent
videos that have appeared of Ngo being
attacked in Portland by Antifa members
during a counterprotest against the far-right
group Proud Boys served to confirm to
Marshall that his view was valid.
By June Marshall realised he would have
to choose between the band he loved and
his own freedom of expression. Fortified by
his resurgent Christian faith, he resigned
from the band with an impassioned blog
post that quickly went viral. “I could remain
and continue to self-censor,” he wrote, “but
it will erode my sense of integrity.”
So did he jump or was he pushed? The
Andy Ngo brouhaha had a curious precursor
in 2018 when Marshall and his bandmatesTed Dwane and Ben Lovett posed for a
photograph with the conservative academic
and pop philosopher Jordan Peterson,
known for his controversial views on gender
identity and the patriarchy. A furore ensued
and Marshall was forced to explain that
having a photo taken with someone doesn’t
mean “you agree with everything they say”.
The incident was eventually smoothed over,
but Marshall’s drift to the political right
was clearly becoming an issue for the band,
which operates in the overwhelmingly
left-liberal music world.
At the time of his departure in 2021 the
tabloid press reported that Marshall had
been “kicked out” of Mumford & Sons by
bandmates who were fed up with his
politics and the problems it was causing.
Marshall disputes that. “I stepped out,”
he says. “It was incredibly difficult.”
Whatever your feelings about Mumford
& Sons as musicians (they’ve always been
a guilty pleasure for me), there’s something
profoundly depressing about his departure.Rock’n’roll bands are supposed to break up
due to creative differences, drug addiction
or illicit affairs, not Twitter storms over
obscure American non-fiction. One doesn’t
have to be a fan of Ngo or Peterson , nor find
their ideological posturing remotely
appealing, to be concerned about a culture
that ostracises someone who does.
“I really didn’t think Antifa would end
up being the hill I died on,” Marshall says.
“It’s not even a topic I actually care that
much about.”A
s teenagers it was actually
Marshall who gave Marcus
Mumford a helping hand, inviting
him to play with his “sleaze
country rap” band, Captain
Kick and the Cowboy Ramblers.
Mumford & Sons formed in
London in 2007 and played Glastonbury
the following year: they were posh,
talented, gently bohemian and cruised the
wave of lumberjack hipsterism that washed
over our shores from across the Atlantic.
Things went interstellar with the album Sigh
No More in 2009, which sold more than a
million copies in the UK, three million in the
US and won a best album award at the Brits.
Critics were never convinced by these
faux-hillbilly private schoolboys, particularly
the self-proclaimed “shitkicker” Marshall (or
“Country Winston” as he is credited on Sigh
No More) and his occasionally prattish antics
on the banjo. Even he seemed ambivalent
at times. “F*** the banjo,” an inebriated
Marshall told a reporter in 2014. But the
fans adored them, singing along euphorically
in their millions. Marshall is most nostalgic
for playing to huge crowds at the Reading
and Leeds festivals: “Pissed teenagers are
always the best to play to,” he says. “They
know all the words, they don’t care about
being cool or whatever. It’s all heart.”
In 2012 Babel became the fastest-selling
album of the year and Mumford & Sons
toured incessantly off the back of it.
Marshall, known as “Win” or “Winny” to
his mates, appeared to enjoy the lifestyle.
“I definitely had a rock’n’roll period,” he
reflects. “I love the band, I love the music.
Some of those songs I love dearly and part of
me is sad that I won’t be playing them again.”
Marshall was rumoured to have dated
the pop star Katy Perry in 2015, then the
following year married the Glee actress
Dianna Agron in a lavish three-day affair
at the Beldi Country Club in Marrakesh.
On paper it all sounds fun, but looking
back Marshall says something wasn’t right.
“I don’t miss fame, I don’t think it was real,”
he says. “I was seduced by it. I got pulled
into it. Particularly through this recent
experience I’ve realised that a lot of my
friends in that world weren’t my real friends.”
His sobriety became an issue too, as life
on the road began to wear. “You see this a
lot in entertainment. You begin as a teenager
and you are paid in beers. Then harder“FIRE THE FASCIST”
BECAME A RALLYING
CRY FOR OUTRAGED
FANS FLOODING
MUMFORD & SONS’
INSTAGRAM PAGE
In Covent Garden with the
Canadian psychologist
Jordan Peterson in
PREVIOUS PAGES: GETTY IMAGES. THESE PAGES: MICHAEL CLEMENT FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE, @JORDANBPETERSON / TWITTERNovember ➤