name	Philip Pullman
birth date	October 19, 1946
birth place	Norwich, UK
occupation	Novelist
genre	Fantasy
notableworks	''His Dark Materials'' trilogy, ''The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ''
Education	English literature
Alma mater	Exeter College, Oxford
influences	John Milton, William Blake
influenced	Christopher Paolini
website	http://www.philip-pullman.com }}

Philip Pullman CBE, FRSL (born 19 October 1946) is an English writer from Norwich. He is the best-selling author of several books, most notably his trilogy of fantasy novels, ''His Dark Materials'', and his fictionalised biography of Jesus, ''The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ''. The first book of ''His Dark Materials'' has been turned into the film ''The Golden Compass'' and the first two books from his ''Sally Lockhart'' series as well as his children's novel ''I was a Rat! or The Scarlet Slippers'' have been adapted for television.

In 2008, ''The Times'' named Pullman in its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Life and career

Philip Pullman was born in Norwich, England, the son of Audrey Evelyn Pullman (née Merrifield) and Royal Air Force pilot Alfred Outram Pullman. The family travelled with his father's job, including to Southern Rhodesia where he spent time at school.

His father was killed in a plane crash in 1953 when Pullman was seven, being awarded posthumously the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC). Pullman said at the beginning of a 2008 exchange that to him as a boy, his father "was a hero, steeped in glamour, killed in action defending his country" and had been "training pilots, I think." Pullman was then presented with a report from The London Gazette of 1954 "which carried the official RAF news of the day [and] said that the medal was given for 'gallant and distinguished service' during the Mau Mau uprising. 'The main task of the Harvards [the squadron of planes led by his father] has been bombing and machine-gunning Mau Mau and their hideouts in densely wooded and difficult country.' This included 'diving steeply into the gorges of [various] rivers, often in conditions of low cloud and driving rain.' Testing conditions, yes, but not much opposition from the enemy, the journalist in the exchange continued]. Very few of the Mau Mau had guns that could land a blow on an aircraft." Pullman responded to this new information, writing "my father probably doesn't come out of this with very much credit, judged by the standards of modern liberal progressive thought" and accepted the new information as "a serious challenge to his childhood memory."

His mother remarried and, with a move to Australia, came Pullman's discovery of comic books including ''Superman'' and ''Batman'', a medium which he continues to espouse. From 1957 he was educated at Ysgol Ardudwy in Harlech, Gwynedd, and spent time in Norfolk with his grandfather, a clergyman. Around this time Pullman discovered John Milton's ''Paradise Lost'', which would become a major influence for ''His Dark Materials''.

From 1963, Pullman attended Exeter College, Oxford, receiving a Third class BA in 1968. In an interview with the ''Oxford Student'' he stated that he "did not really enjoy the English course" and that "I thought I was doing quite well until I came out with my third class degree and then I realised that I wasn’t — it was the year they stopped giving fourth class degrees otherwise I’d have got one of those". He discovered William Blake's illustrations around 1970, which would also later influence him greatly.

Pullman married Judith Speller in 1970 and began teaching middle school children ages 9 to 13 at Bishop Kirk Middle School in Summertown, North Oxford and writing school plays. His first published work was ''The Haunted Storm'', which joint-won the New English Library's Young Writer's Award in 1972. He nevertheless refuses to discuss it. ''Galatea'', an adult fantasy-fiction novel, followed in 1978, but it was his school plays which inspired his first children's book, ''Count Karlstein'', in 1982. He stopped teaching around the publication of ''The Ruby in the Smoke'' (1986), his second children's book, whose Victorian setting is indicative of Pullman's interest in that era.

Pullman taught part-time at Westminster College, Oxford, between 1988 and 1996, continuing to write children's stories. He began ''His Dark Materials'' in about 1993. ''Northern Lights'' (published as ''The Golden Compass'' in the US) was published in 1995 and won the Carnegie Medal, one of the most prestigious British children's fiction awards, and the Guardian Children's Fiction Award.

Pullman has been writing full-time since 1996, but continues to deliver talks and writes occasionally for ''The Guardian''. He was awarded a CBE in the New Year's Honours list in 2004. He also co-judged the prestigious Christopher Tower Poetry Prize (awarded by Oxford University) in 2005 with Gillian Clarke. Pullman also began lecturing at a seminar in English at his alma mater, Exeter College, Oxford, in 2004, the same year that he was elected President of the Blake Society. In 2004 Pullman also guest-edited The Mays Anthology, a collection of new writing from students at the University of Oxford and University of Cambridge.

In 2005, he was awarded The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award by the Swedish Arts Council.

In 2008, he started working on ''The Book of Dust'', a sequel to his completed ''His Dark Materials'' trilogy, and "The Adventures of John Blake", a story for the British children's comic ''The DFC'', with artist John Aggs.

On 23 November 2007, Pullman was made an honorary professor at Bangor University. In June 2008, he became a Fellow supporting the MA in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes University. In September 2008, he hosted "The Writer's Table" for Waterstone's bookshop chain, highlighting 40 books which have influenced his career. In October 2009, he became a patron of the Palestine Festival of Literature.

Pullman has a strong commitment to traditional British civil liberties and is noted for his criticism of growing state authority and government encroachment into everyday life. In February 2009, he was the keynote speaker at the Convention on Modern Liberty in London and wrote an extended piece in ''The Times'' condemning the Labour government for its attacks on basic civil rights. Later, he and other authors threatened to stop visiting schools in protest at new laws requiring them to be vetted to work with youngsters—though officials claimed that the laws had been misinterpreted. In 2010, Pullman left the Liberal Democrats, the party he supported.

On 24 June 2009, Pullman was awarded the degree of D. Litt. (Doctor of Letters), ''honoris causa'', by the University of Oxford at the Encænia ceremony in the Sheldonian Theatre.

''His Dark Materials''

''His Dark Materials'' is a trilogy consisting of ''Northern Lights'' (titled ''The Golden Compass'' in North America), ''The Subtle Knife'' and ''The Amber Spyglass''. ''Northern Lights'' won the Carnegie Medal for children's fiction in the UK in 1995. ''The Amber Spyglass'' was awarded both 2001 Whitbread Prize for best children's book and the Whitbread Book of the Year prize in January 2002, the first children's book to receive that award. The series won popular acclaim in late 2003, taking third place in the BBC's Big Read poll. Pullman later wrote two companion pieces to the trilogy, entitled ''Lyra's Oxford'', and ''Once Upon a Time in the North''. A third companion piece Pullman refers to as the "green book" will expand upon his character Will. He has plans for one more, the as-yet-unwritten ''The Book of Dust''. This book is not a continuation of the trilogy but will include characters and events from His Dark Materials.

In 2005 Pullman was announced as joint winner of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for children's literature.

Perspective on religion

Pullman is a supporter of the British Humanist Association and an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society. ''New Yorker'' journalist Laura Miller has described Pullman as one of England's most outspoken atheists, although Pullman describes himself as an agnostic.

On 15 September 2010, Pullman along with 54 other public figures signed an open letter, published in ''The Guardian'' newspaper, stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI being given "the honour of a state visit" to the UK, arguing that he has led and condoned global abuses of human rights. The letter says "The state of which the pope is head has also resisted signing many major human rights treaties and has formed its own treaties ("concordats") with many states which negatively affect the human rights of citizens of those states". Co-signees included Stephen Fry, Professor Richard Dawkins, Terry Pratchett, Jonathan Miller and Ken Follet.

Literary critic Alan Jacobs (of Wheaton College) said that in ''His Dark Materials'' Pullman replaced the theist world-view of John Milton's ''Paradise Lost'' with a Rousseauist one. Donna Freitas, professor of religion at Boston University, argued on BeliefNet.com that challenges to traditional images of God should be welcomed as part of a "lively dialogue about faith", and Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has proposed that ''His Dark Materials'' be taught as part of religious education in schools. The Christian writers Kurt Bruner and Jim Ware "also uncover spiritual themes within the books." Pullman has also referred to himself as knowingly "of the Devil's party", a reference to William Blake's revisionist take on Milton in ''The Marriage of Heaven and Hell''.

Pullman's latest novel, a contribution to the Canongate Myth Series, is ''The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ''. It is "a far more direct exploration of the foundations of Christianity and the church as well as an examination of the fascination and power of storytelling."

The ''His Dark Materials'' books have been criticised by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and Focus on the Family. Peter Hitchens has argued that Pullman actively pursues an anti-Christian agenda. In support of this contention, he cites an interview in which Pullman is quoted as saying: "I'm trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief." In the same interview, Pullman also acknowledges that a controversy would be likely to boost sales. "But I'm not in the business of offending people. I find the books upholding certain values that I think are important, such as life is immensely valuable and this world is an extraordinarily beautiful place. We should do what we can to increase the amount of wisdom in the world".

Peter Hitchens views the ''His Dark Materials'' series as a direct rebuttal of C. S. Lewis's ''The Chronicles of Narnia''; Pullman has criticized the Narnia books as religious propaganda. Both Pullman's and Lewis's books contain religious allegory that features talking animals, parallel worlds, and children who face adult moral choices that determine the ultimate fate of those worlds.

Christopher Hitchens, author of ''God Is Not Great'', praised ''His Dark Materials'' as a fresh alternative to C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and J. K. Rowling. He described the author as one "whose books have begun to dissolve the frontier between adult and juvenile fiction."

Screen adaptations

A mini-series adaptation of ''I Was a Rat'' was produced by the BBC and aired in three one-hour installments in 2001.

A film adaptation of ''The Butterfly Tattoo'' finished principal photography on 30 September 2007. ''The Butterfly Tattoo'' is a project, supported by Philip Pullman, to allow young artists a chance to gain experience in the film industry. The film is produced by the Dutch production company Dynamic Entertainment.

A co-produced BBC and WGBH Boston television adaptation of ''The Ruby in the Smoke'', starring Billie Piper and Julie Walters, was screened in the UK on BBC One on 27 December 2006, and broadcast on PBS Masterpiece Theatre in America on 4 February 2007. The television adaptation of the second book in the series, ''The Shadow in the North'', aired on the BBC on 26 December 2007. The BBC and WGBH announced plans to adapt the next two Sally Lockhart novels, ''The Tiger in the Well'', and ''The Tin Princess'', for television as well; however, since The Shadow in the North aired in 2007, no information has arisen regarding an adaptation of ''The Tiger in the Well''.

A film adaptation of ''Northern Lights'', titled ''The Golden Compass'', was released in December 2007 by New Line Cinema, starring Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Sam Elliott, Ian McKellen, and Dakota Blue Richards.

Bibliography

Pullman's books include the following works.

Non-series books

1972 ''The Haunted Storm''

1976 ''Galatea''

1982 ''Count Karlstein''

1987 ''How to be Cool''

1989 ''Spring-Heeled Jack''

1990 ''The Broken Bridge''

1992 ''The White Mercedes''

1993 ''The Wonderful Story of Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp''

1995 ''Clockwork, or, All Wound Up''

1995 ''The Firework-Maker's Daughter''

1998 ''Mossycoat''

1998 ''The Butterfly Tattoo'' (re-issue of ''The White Mercedes'')

1999 ''I was a Rat! or The Scarlet Slippers''

2000 ''Puss in Boots: The Adventures of That Most Enterprising Feline''

2004 ''The Scarecrow and his Servant''

2010 ''The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ''

Sally Lockhart

1985 ''The Ruby in the Smoke''

1986 ''The Shadow in the North'' (first published as ''The Shadow in the Plate'')

1991 ''The Tiger in the Well''

1994 ''The Tin Princess''

The New-Cut Gang

1994 ''Thunderbolt's Waxwork''

1995 ''The Gasfitter's Ball''

His Dark Materials

1995 ''Northern Lights'', retitled ''The Golden Compass'' in the US

1997 ''The Subtle Knife''

2000 ''The Amber Spyglass''

Companion books

2003 ''Lyra's Oxford''

2008 ''Once Upon a Time in the North''

No release date ''The Book of Dust'' (not yet published)

Plays

1990 ''Frankenstein''

1992 ''Sherlock Holmes and the Limehouse Horror''

Non-fiction

1978 ''Ancient Civilisations''

1978 ''Using the Oxford Junior Dictionary''

Comics

2008 ''The Adventures of John Blake'' in ''The DFC''

Further reading

Wheat, Leonard F. ''Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials - A Multiple Allegory: Attacking Religious Superstition in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Paradise Lost''.

Robert Darby: ''Intercision-Circumcision: His Dark Materials, a disturbing allegory of genital mutilation'' .

References

External links

Philip-Pullman.com Official site

Philip Pullman at House of Legend

Philip Pullman at Random House Australia

Philip Pullman: a life in writing''The Guardian'', March 4, 2011, "Young fans ask Philip Pullman questions".

Interview: Philip Pullman: new brand of environmentalism''The Daily Telegraph'', January 19, 2008, "Paradise regained" Extract from interview with Pullman in Do Good Lives Have to Cost the Earth?"

Article: Philip Pullman: Kill humans and ration heating ''The Register'', January 21, 2008, ""This is a crisis as big as war"

Article: Pullman criticizes modern fiction ''The Guardian'', August 12, 2002, "Fiction becoming trivial and worthless, says top author".

Article: The Dark Materials debate: life, God, the universe ''The Daily Telegraph'', March 17, 2004, Philip Pullman and Rowan Williams debate on Religion in His Dark Materials

Category:1946 births Category:Academics of Oxford Brookes University Category:Alumni of Exeter College, Oxford Category:British Book Award winners Category:British humanists Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Category:English atheists Category:English children's writers Category:English fantasy writers Category:English novelists Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Category:Guardian award winners Category:Living people Category:People associated with Bangor University Category:People from Norwich

br:Philip Pullman bg:Филип Пулман ca:Philip Pullman cs:Philip Pullman da:Philip Pullman de:Philip Pullman et:Philip Pullman es:Philip Pullman eo:Philip Pullman fa:فیلیپ پولمن fr:Philip Pullman id:Philip Pullman it:Philip Pullman he:פיליפ פולמן ka:ფილიპ პულმანი la:Philippus Pullman lt:Philip Pullman ms:Philip Pullman nl:Philip Pullman ja:フィリップ・プルマン no:Philip Pullman nn:Philip Pullman pl:Philip Pullman pt:Philip Pullman ro:Philip Pullman ru:Пулман, Филип simple:Philip Pullman sk:Philip Pullman sl:Philip Pullman fi:Philip Pullman sv:Philip Pullman th:ฟิลิป พูลแมน uk:Філіп Пуллман zh:菲利普·普爾曼

Name	Charlie Rose
Birthname	Charles Peete Rose, Jr.
Birth date	January 05, 1942
Birth place	Henderson, North Carolina, U.S.
education	Duke University B.A. (1964) Duke University J.D. (1968)
occupation	Talk show hostJournalist
years active	1972–present
credits	''Charlie Rose'', ''60 Minutes II'', ''60 Minutes'', ''CBS News Nightwatch'', ''CBS This Morning''
url	http://www.charlierose.com/ }}

Charles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. (born January 5, 1942) is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991 he has hosted ''Charlie Rose'', an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993. He has also co-anchored ''CBS This Morning'' since January 2012.

Early life

Rose was born in Henderson, North Carolina, the only child of Margaret Frazier and Charles Peete Rose, Sr., tobacco farmers who owned a country store. As a child, Rose lived above his parents' store in Henderson and helped out with the family business from age seven. A high school basketball star, Rose entered Duke University intending to pursue a degree with a pre-med track, but an internship in the office of Democratic North Carolina Senator B. Everett Jordan got him interested in politics. Rose graduated in 1964 with a bachelor's degree in history. At Duke, he was a member of the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity. He earned a Juris Doctor from the Duke University School of Law in 1968. He met his wife, Mary (''née'' King), while attending Duke.

Career

After his wife was hired by the BBC (in New York), Rose handled some assignments for the BBC on a freelance basis. In 1972, while continuing to work at Bankers Trust, he landed a job as a weekend reporter for WPIX-TV. His break came in 1974, after Bill Moyers hired Rose as managing editor for the PBS series ''Bill Moyers' International Report''. In 1975, Moyers named Rose executive producer of ''Bill Moyers Journal''. Rose soon began appearing on camera. "A Conversation with Jimmy Carter," one installment of Moyers's series ''U.S.A.: People and Politics'', won a 1976 Peabody Award. Rose worked at several networks honing his interview skills until KXAS-TV in Dallas-Fort Worth hired him as program manager and gave him the late-night time slot that would become the ''Charlie Rose'' show.

Rose worked for CBS News (1984–1990) as the anchor of ''CBS News Nightwatch'', the network's first late-night news broadcast. The ''Nightwatch'' broadcast of Rose's interview with Charles Manson won an Emmy Award in 1987. In 1990, Rose left CBS to serve as anchor of ''Personalities'', a syndicated program produced by Fox Broadcasting Company, but he got out of his contract after six weeks because of the tabloid-style content of the show. ''Charlie Rose'' premiered on PBS station Thirteen/WNET on September 30, 1991, and has been nationally syndicated since January 1993. In 1994, Rose moved the show to a studio owned by Bloomberg Television, which allowed for improved satellite interviewing.

Rose was a correspondent for ''60 Minutes II'' from its inception in January 1999 until its cancellation in September 2005, and was later named a correspondent on ''60 Minutes''.

Rose was a member of the board of directors of Citadel Broadcasting Corporation from 2003 to 2009. In May 2010, Charlie Rose delivered the commencement address at North Carolina State University.

On November 15, 2011, it was announced that Rose would return to CBS to help anchor ''CBS This Morning'', replacing ''The Early Show'', commencing January 9, 2012, along with co-anchors Erica Hill and Gayle King.

Cameo appearances

Rose has appeared as himself in the 1998 film ''Primary Colors'', in a 2000 episode of ''The Simpsons'' and in the 2008 movie ''Elegy''. He and his show were also used in the Wes Anderson film The Royal Tenenbaums. He also appears as himself in the 2011 George Clooney directed film, ''The Ides of March''.

Accusations of conflict of interest

While hosting the 2002 Coca-Cola Company shareholders' meeting, Rose said "few companies are able to connect as completely with consumers in the way that Coca-Cola is. It is a privilege to be associated with [The Coca-Cola family] ... This is the business of Coca-Cola: being part of a family, being worldwide, doing well and doing good at the same time." Afterward, Coca-Cola agreed to become what Rose called "a leading underwriter" of ''The Charlie Rose Show'', paying "six or possibly seven figures." Even the Charlie Rose mugs used on his PBS show feature a Coca-Cola logo on one side. Although CBS News policy bars correspondents from doing commercials and product endorsements, the ''Washington Post'' reported CBS was "comfortable" with Rose's actions. Rose insists he "would never do a story on ''60 Minutes II'' about anybody who underwrites my PBS show."

Quiet influence

''The New York Times'' reported that Rose encouraged a discussion between the leaders of NBC and Fox, that led eventually to a mutual reduction in ad hominem attacks between Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly on their respective news programs.

Rose has attended several Bilderberg Group conference meetings, including meetings held in the United States in 2008; Spain in 2010; and Switzerland in 2011. These unofficial conferences hold guests from North America and Western Europe, most of whom are political leaders and businessmen. Details of meetings are closed off to the public and strictly invitation-only, and critics speculate the controversial nature of these meetings of highly influential people. Accusations from conspiracy theorists against The Charlie Rose show claim that it has become the US media outlet for Bilderberg.

Personal life

Rose's twelve-year marriage to Mary Rose (née King) ended in divorce in 1980. Mary is the sister-in-law of Morgan Stanley Chairman John J. Mack. Since 1993, his companion has been socialite and city-planning advocate Amanda Burden, a stepdaughter of CBS founder William S. Paley.

On March 29, 2006, after experiencing shortness of breath in Syria, Rose was flown to Paris and underwent surgery for mitral valve repair in the Georges-Pompidou European Hospital. His surgery was performed under the supervision of Alain F. Carpentier, a pioneer of the procedure. Rose returned to the air on June 12, 2006, with Bill Moyers and Yvette Vega (the show's executive producer), to discuss his surgery and recuperation.

Rose owns a farm in Oxford, North Carolina, an apartment overlooking Central Park in New York City, a beach house in Bellport, New York and an apartment in Washington D.C..

References

External links

Charlie Rose Official website of his eponymous show

Charlie Rose official channel on ''YouTube''

Charlie Rose collected news and commentary at the ''Los Angeles Times''

Charlie Rose shows on Hulu

celebritynetworth.com, Celebrity Net Worth, Charlie Rose

Why Business Loves Charlie Rose David A. Kaplan, ''Fortune'', September 28, 2009

Category:American journalists Category:American television talk show hosts Category:New York television reporters Category:CBS News Category:60 Minutes correspondents Category:Duke University alumni Category:New York University alumni Category:People from Henderson, North Carolina Category:1942 births Category:Living people

bg:Чарли Роуз de:Charlie Rose fa:چارلی رز fr:Charlie Rose he:צ'ארלי רוז ro:Charlie Rose ru:Роуз, Чарли sv:Charlie Rose

Andrew Copson is (since January 2010) Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association. He is a regular contributor to New Humanist Magazine, and has also written for The Guardian and New Statesman. Before becoming Chief Executive, he was responsible for education and public affairs at the BHA. He campaigns for an open society without faith schools, religious privilege or discrimination.

He is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, an Associate of the Centre for Law and Religion at Cardiff University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He has a first class degree in Ancient and Modern History from Oxford University. He attended Balliol College at Oxford.

External links

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/andrew_copson/profile.html Profile at Guardian

http://www.humanism.org.uk/about/people/staff profile at the British Humanist Association

Category:Living people Category:British humanists Category:British atheists Category:Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford

name	Peter Hitchens
birth name	Peter Jonathan Hitchens
birth date	October 28, 1951
birth place	Sliema, Malta
occupation	Author, journalist
nationality	United Kingdom
Alma mater	University of York
religion	Anglican Christian
notableworks	''The Abolition of Britain'', ''The Broken Compass: How British Politics Lost its Way'', ''A Brief History of Crime'', ''The Rage Against God''
relatives	Christopher Hitchens (brother)
website	http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk }}

Peter Jonathan Hitchens (born 28 October 1951) is an award-winning British columnist and author. He has published five books, including ''The Abolition of Britain'', ''A Brief History of Crime'', ''The Broken Compass: How British Politics Lost its Way'' and most recently ''The Rage Against God''. Hitchens writes for Britain's ''The Mail on Sunday'' newspaper. A former resident correspondent in Moscow and Washington, Hitchens continues to work as an occasional foreign reporter, and appears frequently in the British broadcast media. He is the younger brother of the writer Christopher Hitchens.

Michael Gove, writing in ''The Times'', has asserted that, for Hitchens, what is more important than the split between the Left and the Right is "the deeper gulf between the restless progressive and the Christian pessimist", and in 2010 Hitchens himself wrote "in all my experience in life, I have seldom seen a more powerful argument for the fallen nature of man, and his inability to achieve perfection, than those countries in which man sets himself up to replace God with the State".

Early life

Peter Hitchens was born in 1951 in Malta, where his father was stationed with the Royal Navy. He was educated at The Leys School, which he left at 15, completing his secondary education at the Oxford College of Further Education before entering the University of York, where he attained a BA in Politics, and is said to have replied 'I was too busy starting a revolution' when asked why he was late for a lecture. He married Eve Ross, the daughter of left-wing journalist David Ross, in 1983.

Career in journalism

Hitchens worked for the ''Daily Express'' between 1977 and December 2000, initially as a reporter specialising in education and industrial and labour affairs, then as a political reporter, and subsequently as Deputy Political Editor. While working for the newspaper in 1992 he broke the story concerning Jennifer's Ear.

Leaving parliamentary journalism to cover defence and diplomatic affairs, he reported on the decline and ultimate collapse of the communist regimes in several Warsaw Pact countries, an assignment which culminated in a stint as Moscow Correspondent, where he witnessed and reported on the final months of the Soviet Union in 1990/91. He became the ''Daily Express'' Washington correspondent soon afterwards. Returning to London in 1995, he became a commentator and, eventually, a regular columnist. Hitchens continued to espouse a conservative viewpoint despite the publication's general move towards the political centre in the mid-nineties, and its decision to support the Labour Party under Tony Blair in the months approaching the 1997 general election. In December 2000, Hitchens announced his departure from the ''Daily Express'' in response to the title's acquisition by Richard Desmond; Hitchens felt that his own moral and religious conservatism was incompatible with Desmond's publishing a string of sex magazines. He joined ''The Mail on Sunday'', where he has a weekly column and weblog in which he debates directly with readers and produces occasional reportage from the UK.

Hitchens has also written for ''The Spectator'', a conservative British magazine, and sporadically for more left-leaning publications such as ''The Guardian'', ''Prospect'', and the ''New Statesman''. He is also an occasional contributor to ''The American Conservative'' magazine.

In 2007 and 2009 Hitchens was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in Political Journalism. He won the prize in 2010 for his foreign reporting.

Foreign reporting

In 2010 Hitchens was described by Edward Lucas in ''The Economist'' as "a forceful, tenacious, eloquent and brave journalist. Readers with long memories may remember his extraordinary coverage of the revolution in Romania in 1989, or more recently his intrepid travels to places such as North Korea. He lambasts woolly thinking and crooked behaviour at home and abroad".

Hitchens first became a roving foreign reporter in the early 1990s while working for the ''Daily Express'', when he reported from South Africa during the last days of apartheid, and from Somalia at the time of the US-led military intervention in the country. He continued his foreign reporting after joining ''The Mail on Sunday'', for which he has written several foreign reports, including from Russia (including Moscow) and the US, Western and Eastern Europe, many of the former Soviet Republics (including a 2008 visit to Minsk in Belarus, and a 2010 report from Sevastopol in Ukraine described by Edward Lucas in ''The Economist'' as a "dismaying lapse"), Astana in Kazakhstan, the Middle East (including Israel, Gaza, a 2003 visit to Iraq in the wake of the 2003 invasion, and an undercover report from Iran, which was described by Iain Dale as "a quite brilliant account"), Africa (including a trip to the Congo in 2008, during which he narrowly avoided being lynched) Cuba, Venezuela, China, Japan, North Korea, Burma and Istanbul. In 2009, Hitchens was shortlisted for Foreign Reporter of the Year in the British Press Awards.

In 2010, Hitchens was awarded the Orwell Prize in recognition of his foreign reporting.

Appearances in the British broadcast media

Hitchens speaks frequently on British radio and television, often debating (typically left-wing) opponents on a variety of social and political topics. He is a regular panellist on ''Question Time'' and ''Any Questions?'' and has been a frequent guest on ''This Week'' with Andrew Neil, ''The Daily Politics'' and ''The Big Questions''. In 2011, Hitchens wrote of his relationship with the broadcast media that "People like me – though still allowed to speak – are allowed on to mainstream national broadcasting only under strict conditions: that we are 'balanced' by at least three other people who disagree with us so that our views, actually held by millions, are made to look like an eccentric minority opinion".

Hitchens has authored and presented several documentaries on Channel 4 and BBC Four, in which he examined Britain's entry into the Common Market, discussed the erosion of civil liberties in the UK, and critically examined the political achievements of Nelson Mandela, and later the career of David Cameron (see ''On the Conservative Party''). In the late 1990s, he co-presented a programme on Talk Radio UK with Labour Party stalwarts Derek Draper and Austin Mitchell. Hitchens was offered the chance to present a programme on his own by the station's then boss, Kelvin MacKenzie, but preferred and suggested an adversarial format with a left-wing co-presenter, believing this to be the best way of achieving broadcast fairness and balance.

June 2011 ''Question Time'' appearance

In June 2011, Hitchens was booed and heckled at length by a ''Question Time'' audience for expressing a socially conservative position on the sexualisation of children, and was the only panel member to adopt this position. During the same programme, chairman and presenter David Dimbleby put to Hitchens that the paper he worked for was "a bigoted, sexist, homophobic comic strip". Shortly after his appearance, Hitchens wrote "Is there any point in public debate in a society where hardly anyone has been taught how to think, while millions have been taught what to think? Sometimes I wonder".

Personal political history

Hitchens studied politics at the University of York from 1970 to 1973. He was a Trotskyist member of the International Socialists from 1969 to 1975, and joined the British Labour Party in 1977, campaigning for Ken Livingstone's unsuccessful candidature for Hampstead in the 1979 general election. Hitchens left the Labour Party in 1983 when he became a political reporter at the ''Daily Express'', thinking it wrong to carry a party card when directly reporting politics. The period also coincided with a culmination of growing personal disillusionment with the Labour movement. In 2010, Hitchens dismissed the "cruel revolutionary rubbish" he promoted as a Trotskyist as "poison".

He joined the Conservative Party in 1997, but left in 2003. Hitchens challenged Michael Portillo for the Conservative Party nomination in the Kensington and Chelsea seat in 1999.

Hitchens believes that no party he could support will be created until the Conservative Party disintegrates, an event he first began calling for in 2006. From 2008, he began frequently advocating in his writing that what would facilitate such a collapse would be for the Conservative Party to lose the 2010 general election: "If they fail to win an election against this awful government, then it is my belief and hope that they will collapse. Many of their MPs and supporters will leave politics altogether, others will go to the Liberal Democrats or Labour, where they belong. Some will be interested in an entirely new party, which will not be the Conservatives and so will be able to appeal to the many patriotic, law-abiding people abandoned by Labour".

Public image

In ''The Guardian'', James Silver describes Hitchens as "the Mail on Sunday's fulminator-in-chief" and his columns as "molten Old Testament fury shot through with visceral wit". Hitchens has said of his reputation: "I know a lot of people consider me to be disreputable or foaming at the mouth, but you have to learn not to care, or at least not to mind. I don't like being called 'bonkers' and I think to some extent it demeans people who use phrases like that. But I take comfort from the fact that most totalitarian regimes tend to classify their opponents as mentally disordered."

Core beliefs

Morality and religion

Hitchens, a former atheist, is a confirmed and communicant member of the Church of England and an advocate of moral virtues founded on religious (particularly Christian) faith. He argues that these have been undermined and eroded by social liberals, and by those he calls cultural Marxists, since the 1960s—a theory he explores in his book ''The Abolition of Britain''.

In support of this thesis, Hitchens cites, among other things, what he describes as serial attacks on marriage by the State. He identifies these attacks as the introduction of no-fault divorce, the removal or redistribution of what were formerly the exclusive privileges of marriage (and the resultant decline in status of the matrimonial state), the abolition of the Christian Sunday, and the growing economic and cultural pressure on wives and mothers to go out to work. He believes that without faith and without strong families, the development of conscience is stunted, private life is diminished and the power of the state increased.

He believes that many of the measures which created the "permissive society" were mistaken or excessive and need to be reexamined, and posits that homosexual relationships should not be granted legal parity with heterosexual marriage.

Hitchens believes that abortion should be illegal at any stage of pregnancy.

Hitchens defends the use of the Church of England's 1662 ''Book of Common Prayer'' and the Authorised (or King James) version of the Bible. Of the latter, he has written "it is not simply a translation, but a poetic translation, written to be read out loud to country people in large buildings without loudspeakers, to be remembered, to lodge in the mind and to disturb the temporal with the haunting sound of the eternal". Hitchens feels that both books are indispensable foundations of Anglicanism's "powerful combination of scripture, tradition and reason", and that they have been undermined as a result of "senior figures [within the Church of England] wishing to dump what they regard as the baggage of a penitential and gloomy past".

Hitchens has often spoken out against the liberal positions of the current Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

Hitchens does not subscribe to a literal interpretation of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. In a review of his brother's work ''God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything'', he stated that, "many decades have passed since I fancied the story of Adam and Eve was literal truth, if I ever did.

Liberty, security and crime

Hitchens advocates a society governed by conscience and the rule of law, which he sees as the best guarantee of liberty. He believes that capital punishment is a key element of a strong justice system.

He warns that the decline of conscience and morality will inevitably lead to a strong state. He is especially critical of the use of "security" as a pretext for diluting and eroding individual liberty. He argues that increased "security" destroys freedom without necessarily increasing safety, and says that there is no contradiction between maintaining liberty and protecting the realm.

Hitchens is critical of moves towards authoritarian government and the erosion of civil liberties, whether they come from the Right or the Left of the political spectrum. Accordingly, he has been highly critical of the British government's desire for identity cards, its attempts to abolish jury trial, to centralise the police, and its creation of a national law enforcement body in the form of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). He describes these developments as facets of governmental desire for permanent, irreversible constitutional revolution, and an attack on English liberty in general.

Hitchens is opposed to the relaxation of laws against the possession of illegal recreational drugs. He argues that the law's active disapproval of drug taking is an essential counterweight to the "pro-drug propaganda" of popular culture. He has said that attempts to combat drug use by restricting supply and persecuting drug dealers are invariably futile, unless possession and use are punished as well. He counters claims that the "War on Drugs" has failed by suggesting that the state has made no serious efforts to reduce or eliminate illegal drug consumption for many years. Hitchens has said that the prevailing approach, known as "Harm reduction", is defeatist and counter-productive. He was among the earliest commentators to argue that cannabis presents a major mental health risk to users.

Foreign policy

Hitchens opposed the Kosovo and 2003 Iraq Wars on the grounds that neither was in the interests of either Britain or the United States. He has not, however, associated himself with the Left-dominated anti-war campaigns, not least as he remains a strong supporter of the State of Israel. He also opposes the British military presence in Afghanistan, arguing that it is destined to fail and has no achievable aim. Hitchens made a live appearance on BBC News in November 2009 during which he stated, in a response to Gordon Brown's announcement that more troops would be sent to Afghanistan, that a ridiculous position had been reached in which none of the front bench politicians of any of the three main British parties were prepared to say that the British mission to the country had failed.

On Europe, Hitchens argues that the United Kingdom should negotiate an amicable departure from the European Union, whose laws and traditions he regards as incompatible with the laws and liberties of England, and with the national independence of the United Kingdom as a whole. He also believes that the interests of the European Union are often different from—and in many cases hostile to—those of the UK. Devolution of governmental powers to Scotland and Wales in 1998 was, for Hitchens, not a step towards true independence for those countries, but rather part of an EU-inspired strategy to dissolve the UK into statelets and regions, as a preliminary step to its complete absorption into a European superstate. For the same reason, he has opposed attempts to divide England into regions.

World War II

For most of his career, Hitchens took the view that World War II was "the part of British history which provides the ultimate justification and vindication of this country's existence, its heroic and solitary battle against Nazi tyranny". However, in 2008 he publicly reversed this view, referring in particular to the declaration of war made against Nazi Germany (after the invasion of Poland) which had, in his opinion, disastrous consequences for Britain. A subsequent analysis that Hitchens made of this issue in one of his columns was described by Michael White of ''The Guardian'' as being "as melancholy a cry of pain about the modern world as I have recently encountered". Hitchens has also written critically about the Allied policy of strategic bombing of German cities during the second world war, citing in particular the A.C. Grayling book ''Among the Dead Cities'', which in Hitchens's view makes "the case against the bombing of German civilians unanswerable".

Northern Ireland

Hitchens condemned the 1998 Belfast Agreement as a surrender to the Provisional IRA and a "collapse and a surrender to lawlessness". He believes that the best approach to solving Northern Ireland's problems would have been the full integration of Northern Ireland into the United Kingdom, arguing that creating a Northern Irish Parliament at Stormont impeded this. He believes that the achievements of direct rule over Northern Ireland, not least in removing discrimination against Roman Catholics, have been greatly underestimated. He maintains that Northern Ireland is now only a provisional part of the UK since, under the terms of the agreement, it can be transferred to Irish sovereignty by a single, irreversible referendum.

Education

Hitchens condemns comprehensive education, the Plowden reforms of primary schooling and modern child-centred teaching methods, seeing them as egalitarian political projects with no educational justification and many educational disadvantages. He bases his case on John Marks's ''The Betrayed Generation'', (Centre for Policy Studies 2001), the Engineering Council's survey of changing undergraduate maths skills in 2000, and Durham University's unvarying annual general ability test, and has also cited a 2004 article by Jenni Russell in ''The Guardian'' which draws attention to this issue. Hitchens has also contended that comprehensive education has brought about a general dilution of education and of examination standards, and explores in detail the history and consequences of this development in Chapter Eleven of ''The Broken Compass''—'The Fall of the Meritocracy'. He believes a further consequence of egalitarian schooling is serious damage to the national culture, and fears that lowered standards in technical, scientific and mathematical education, combined with poor teaching of English and the resulting decline in literacy, threaten to leave Britain lagging behind emerging economic powers such as China and India.

As a means of improving standards in the UK, as well as increasing social mobility, Hitchens supports a return to the academically selective grammar school system which has been gradually dismantled by successive British governments since the issuing of Circular 10/65 by Anthony Crosland in 1965 (though Hitchens prefers the German system of selection to the Eleven Plus examination).

As a supporter of orthodox Christian morality, Hitchens opposes sex education in schools. He argues that the general introduction of sex education in schools has incontrovertibly been accompanied by an increase in sexual activity among the young, with a resultant rise in pregnancies, abortions and instances of sexually transmitted diseases—the very things that sex education is ostensibly intended to prevent. He argues that its real purpose is the undermining of Christian sexual morality, based on stable monogamous marriage.

Labour party

Hitchens contends that the modern version of the Labour party was "formed mainly by struggles in the 1980s" and in a programme of "social liberalism, egalitarian education and the sexual revolution" envisaged at the end of the 1950s by figures such as Anthony Crosland and Roy Jenkins; the latter Hitchens has written critically of at considerable length, and has likened his short book ''The Labour Case'' (1959) to "a revolutionary manifesto".

Hitchens was critical of New Labour for what he called "attacks on the constitution", and described its Prime Minister Tony Blair's constitutional reforms as a "slow-motion coup d'état". He has also asserted that the New Labour policy on immigration was a "slow motion putsch". Hitchens believes that the most profound changes brought about by New Labour were designed to concentrate power in the hands of the executive, to debauch civil service neutrality, and to turn Parliament into a mere tool of Downing Street, with Blair himself as Chief Executive. In Hitchens's view, the most significant single action in this programme was the passing of Orders in Council allowing Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell, both political appointees, to give orders to civil servants. This signalled, in his view, a general attempt to politicise Whitehall, which has continued ever since. Hitchens claims to have detected a parallel effort to appropriate some of the trappings of monarchy and to diminish the Crown's significance and standing, which he sees as embryonic presidentialism.

Hitchens also often caricatured Blair as "Princess Tony". This was a reference to Blair's use of the expression "The People's Princess" to eulogise Princess Diana after her death. Hitchens has also been very critical of Blair's activity subsequent to his stepping down as Prime Minister. Hitchens described Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, as a "boring, dismal Marxoid", whose public performances were "horribly like Humphrey Bogart's portrayal of the tormented Captain Queeg in ''The Caine Mutiny''". However, Hitchens criticised what he saw as a "prejudiced, shallow" attempt to destroy Brown by the media after the latter became Prime Minister in 2007.

Conservative Party

Hitchens is dismissive of the modern British Conservative Party, frequently deriding the party's leadership as the "useless Tories". He has often been at odds with fellow conservatives, and has argued that the Conservative Party has a consistent record of ill-considered parliamentary acts and policies that cannot be dismissed as accidents or mistakes. He cites as examples: the reorganisation of local government in 1974, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984, the introduction of the GCSE exam, the Criminal Justice Act of 1991, the negotiation and signing of the Single European Act and the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, the severe reduction in defence spending at the end of the Cold War, the privatisation of the UK's railways, the Iraq War and the final abandonment of all attempts to re-introduce grammar schools.

In March 2007 Hitchens wrote and presented a television programme for Channel 4, ''Toff at the Top'', in which he argued this view. Hitchens views Cameron's social, educational, and foreign policies as being indistinguishable from those of New Labour. Cameron, having declined previous interview requests from Hitchens, also declined to participate in the broadcast. Subsequent to the programme's airing the Conservative leader described Hitchens as "a maniac" at a public meeting in Oxfordshire.

Hitchens has called for the establishment of a new political party in the UK, representing the traditionalist conservative strand of opinion that he espouses, and which would, in his own words, be "neither bigoted nor politically correct". He believes that such a movement cannot come into being until the Conservative Party collapses, arguing that many millions of Britons habitually vote for this and other political parties out of tribal loyalty, from which they cannot be detached by reasoned argument.

Poverty and wealth distribution

Hitchens believes there to be a correlation between adherence to strong ethical standards, including conscientious labour, deferred gratification, self-denial and thrift, and middle class status (and the material well-being it generally brings). He has stated that "The middle classes are not good because they are better off. They are better off because they are good." He rejects the belief that any poverty which exists in Britain is anything other than relative. "The British 'poor' of today do not starve, do not freeze, do not go without medical treatment—as truly poor people across the world undoubtedly still do." He argues that the claim that absolute poverty continues to exist in Britain is "a lie the Left uses to destroy the middle class".

Transport

Hitchens has criticised the Privatisation of British Rail in the 1990s, and mocks Conservatives for their belief that road transport, heavily state subsidised, is in some way more conservative than railways. He has also bemoaned the large-scale reductions made to Britain's rail infrastructure in the 1960s, and the subsequent increased focus on the motor car as the central plank of transport policy. Hitchens explores this issue in depth in 'The age of the train', chapter twelve of his book ''The Broken Compass''.

Global warming

Hitchens is sceptical of the alleged extent of man made global warming, has described the fuss surrounding it as "alarmist" and the facts presented as false or misleading or using data selectively. In particular, he praises the Christopher Booker work ''The Real Global Warming Disaster'' as being an effective exposé of many of what he sees as myths surrounding the theory.

Relationship with elder brother Christopher

Hitchens's elder brother is the prominent U.S.-based writer and antitheistic polemicist Christopher Hitchens. Christopher has said that the main difference between the two is their attitudes toward belief in the existence of God. Peter himself has said, "We inhabit separate worlds," and "We're not close. We're different people, we have different lives, we have entirely different pleasures, we live in different continents. If we weren't brothers we wouldn't know each other."

The brothers had a protracted falling out after Peter wrote an article in 2001 in ''The Spectator'' alleging that his brother had said he "didn't care if the Red Army watered its horses at Hendon"—a claim denied by Christopher. After the birth of Peter's third child, the two brothers reconciled, although Christopher said "There is no longer any official froideur, but there's no official—what's the word?—chaleur, either."

Peter's review of ''God Is Not Great'' led to public argument between the brothers but not to any renewed estrangement. In the review, Peter wrote that his brother’s book was misguided, "mostly in the way that it blames faith for so many bad things and gives it no credit for any of the good it may have done. I think it misunderstands religious people and their aims and desires. And I think it asserts a number of things as true and obvious that are nothing of the sort".

In June 2007, the brothers appeared as panellists on BBC TV's ''Question Time'', where they clashed over a number of issues, most notably the intervention in Afghanistan. In April 2008, on US soil, they debated the invasion of Iraq and the existence of God, respectively. Peter Hitchens indicated that the occasion would mark the last time he would participate in such events with his brother, "because of the danger that they might turn into gladiatorial combat in which nothing would be resolved and enmity could be created."

However, in October 2010 at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the brothers again had a debate—described as a conversation with the press—over the nature of God in civilisation. The two clashed over the main issues, with Peter lamenting the decline in civility to levels "not far from the Stone Age." However, when the subject of Christopher's illness in concert with religion was brought up, Peter defended his brother's choice of beliefs, stating that he thought "it would be quite grotesque to imagine someone would have to get cancer to see the merits of religion."

Publications

Hitchens is the author of ''The Abolition of Britain'' (1999, ISBN 978-0-7043-8140-7) and ''A Brief History of Crime'' (2003, ISBN 978-1-84354-148-6), both critical of changes in British society since the 1960s. A compendium of his ''Daily Express'' columns was published under the title ''Monday Morning Blues'' in 2000.

An updated edition of ''A Brief History of Crime'' (2003 ISBN 978-1-84354-148-6), re-titled ''The Abolition of Liberty: The Decline of Order and Justice in England'' (ISBN 978-1-84354-149-3) and featuring a new chapter on identity cards, was published in April 2004. ''The Broken Compass: How British Politics Lost its Way'' (Continuum ISBN 978-1-84706-405-9), was published in May 2009, and ''The Rage Against God'' (Continuum ISBN 978-1-4411-0572-1), was published in Britain in March 2010, and was due to be published in the US (Zondervan ISBN 978-0-310-32031-9) in May 2010.

In January 2011 Hitchens announced he was working on a new book entitled ''The War We Never Fought'', about what he sees as the non-existent war on drugs.

Bibliography

See also

Conservatism

List of newspaper columnists

Paleoconservatism

Pro-life

Social conservatism

References

Further reading

"Brothers at war over Britain" Article on a debate about Britain's future with brother Christopher Hitchens, 15 October 1999. Includes some short, selected audio clips from the event.

Hitchens on the European Union" – December 2002. Karl Zinsmeister interviews Peter Hitchens at his home in Oxford.

Bulldog" – Guardian interview, 20 September 1999.

External links

;Regular features

Peter Hitchens's ''Mail on Sunday'' blog

;Book Reviews

Reviews of ''A Brief History of Crime'' in: ''The Daily Telegraph'', and ''The Observer''

;TV Reviews ''Reviews of ''Toff at the Top'' in:''

''The Daily Telegraph''; and

''The Times''.

Description of ''Toff at the Top'' on the Channel 4 website

;Video

Interview about ''The Abolition of Britain'' for the Booknotes series ''Pop-up window with embedded RealPlayer plugin''

;Debates

Christopher Hitchens debates Peter Hitchens

;Sermon

Peter Hitchens's address to City New Year Service, The Parish Church of St. Michael's Cornhill, London, January 2005

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