Wheen was born into an army family and educated at two independent schools: Copthorne Preparatory School near Crawley, West Sussex, and Harrow School in north west London. Running away from Harrow at 16 "to join the alternative society," Wheen had early periods as a "dogsbody" at The Guardian and the New Statesman and attended Royal Holloway College, University of London, after a period at a crammer.[1] At Harrow, he was briefly a contemporary of Mark Thatcher[2] who has been a subject of his journalism.[3] Wheen is the author of several books, including a biography of Karl Marx[4] which won the Deutscher Memorial Prize in 1999,[5] and has been translated into twenty languages.[6] He followed the biography of Karl Marx with a "biography" of Das Kapital, which follows the creation and publication of the first volume of Marx's major work as well as other incomplete volumes. Wheen had a column in The Guardian for several years. He writes for Private Eye and is currently the magazine's deputy editor. His collected journalism, Hoo-hahs and Passing Frenzies, won him the Orwell Prize in 2003. He has also been a regular columnist for the London Evening Standard. In April 2012, Wheen suffered the loss of his entire book collection, his "life's work", and an unfinished novel, in a garden shed fire. Wheen broadcasts regularly, mainly on BBC Radio 4, and is a regular panellist on The News Quiz, in which he has often referred to the fact that he resembles the former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith.[9] He is also a regular on Have I Got News for You.[10] Wheen wrote a docudrama, The Lavender List, for BBC Four on the final period of Harold Wilson's premiership, concentrating on his relationship with Marcia Williams, which first screened in March 2006. It starred Kenneth Cranham as Wilson and Gina McKee as Williams. In April 2007, the BBC paid £75,000 to Williams (then Baroness Falkender) in an out-of-court settlement over claims made in the programme. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Wheen From an academic perspective, Marx's work contributed to the birth of modern sociology. He has been cited as one of the nineteenth century's three masters of the "school of suspicion", alongside Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud,[230] and as one of the three principal architects of modern social science along with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber.[14] In contrast to other philosophers, Marx offered theories that could often be tested with the scientific method.[12] Both Marx and Auguste Comte set out to develop scientifically justified ideologies in the wake of European secularisation and new developments in the philosophies of history and science. Working in the Hegelian tradition, Marx rejected Comtean sociological positivism in attempt to develop a science of society.[231] Karl Löwith considered Marx and Søren Kierkegaard to be the two greatest Hegelian philosophical successors.[232] In modern sociological theory, Marxist sociology is recognised as one of the main classical perspectives. Isaiah Berlin considers Marx the true founder of modern sociology, "in so far as anyone can claim the title."[233] Beyond social science, he has also had a lasting legacy in philosophy, literature, the arts, and the humanities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx

• published: 10 Feb 2016
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