John Kampfner

Biography

John Kampfner began his journalistic career as a foreign correspondent with the Daily Telegraph, first in East Berlin where he reported on the fall of the Wall and unification of Germany, and then in Moscow at the time of the collapse of Soviet Communism. He went on to become Chief Political Correspondent at the FT and political commentator for the BBC's Today programme and Newsnight.

As Editor of the New Statesman, he took the magazine to thirty-year circulation highs, and was Society of Magazine Editors Current Affairs Editor of the Year. He also won the Foreign Press Association award for Journalist of the Year and Film of the Year for a two-part BBC film on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, called The Ugly War. His film War Spin received considerable publicity.

He writes weekly for the Times and appears regularly in other newspapers such as the FT, Guardian and New European. John has made several programmes for BBC Radio 4 and World Service, and frequently appears on the BBC and Sky.

John joined Chatham House as Executive Director, UK in the World project. Before that, as a Consulting Fellow, he wrote a three-part series on competitive rivalries in an era of global crisis. He was also a Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.

Fluent in German and Russian, John regularly speaks at political conferences and cultural festivals around the world. In the arts world, he is Chair of the House of Illustration, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate for his services to the arts by Bath Spa University.

John established the Creative Industries Federation to much acclaim providing a single voice for the UK's creative sector. For eight years he was founder Chair of Turner Contemporary, one of the country’s most successful art galleries.

John’s books include the best-selling Blair’s Wars, now a standard text in schools, Freedom For Sale, which was short-listed for the Orwell Prize, The Rich, from Slaves to Superyachts, A 2000-Year History, and Why the Germans Do It Better.