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Christopher John Penrice Booker (7 October 1937 – 3 July 2019) was an English
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...
and author. He was a founder and first editor of the
satirical magazine ''
Private Eye'' in 1961. From 1990 onward he was a columnist for ''
The Sunday Telegraph
''The Sunday Telegraph'' is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in February 1961 and published by the Telegraph Media Group, a division of Press Holdings.
It is the sister paper of ''The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', kn ...
''. In 2009, he published ''
The Real Global Warming Disaster''. He also disputed the link between
passive smoking
Passive smoking is the inhalation of tobacco smoke, called secondhand smoke (SHS), or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), by persons other than the intended "active" smoker. It occurs when tobacco smoke enters an environment, causing its inhalat ...
and
cancer
Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...
,
[ and the dangers posed by asbestos. In his ''Sunday Telegraph'' section he frequently commented on the UK Family Courts and Social Services.
In collaboration with Richard North, Booker wrote a variety of publications advancing a eurosceptic, though academically disputed,]European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...
. The best-known of these is ''The Great Deception''.
Career
Early life
Booker was educated at Dragon School
("Reach for the Sun")
, established = 1877
, closed =
, type = Preparatory day and boarding school and Pre-Prep school
, religion = Church of England
, president =
, head_label = Head
, head = Emma Goldsm ...
, Shrewsbury School
Shrewsbury School is a public school (English independent boarding school for pupils aged 13 –18) in Shrewsbury.
Founded in 1552 by Edward VI by Royal Charter, it was originally a boarding school for boys; girls have been admitted into ...
[Christopher Booker obituary](_blank)
Published by The Guardian on 4 July 2019, retrieved on 12 July 2019 and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he read History.
1960s
With fellow Salopians Richard Ingrams
Richard Reid Ingrams (born 19 August 1937 in Chelsea, London) is an English journalist, a co-founder and second editor of the British satirical magazine ''Private Eye'', and founding editor of '' The Oldie'' magazine. He left the latter job at ...
and Willie Rushton
William George Rushton (18 August 1937 – 11 December 1996) was an English cartoonist, satirist, comedian, actor and performer who co-founded the satirical magazine ''Private Eye''.
Early life
Rushton was born 18 August 1937 in 3 Wilbraham Plac ...
he founded '' Private Eye'' in 1961, and was its first editor. He was ousted by Ingrams in 1963. Returning in 1965, he remained a permanent member of the magazine's collaborative joke-writing team thereafter (with Ingrams, Barry Fantoni and current editor Ian Hislop
Ian David Hislop (born 13 July 1960) is a British journalist, satirist, writer, broadcaster, and editor of the magazine ''Private Eye''. He has appeared on numerous radio and television programmes and has been a team captain on the BBC quiz sho ...
) till his death.
Booker began writing jazz reviews for ''The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally.
It was f ...
'' while at university.The Sunday Telegraph
''The Sunday Telegraph'' is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in February 1961 and published by the Telegraph Media Group, a division of Press Holdings.
It is the sister paper of ''The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', kn ...
'' as well. His contributions included a positive account of a concert given by the pianist Erroll Garner
Erroll Louis Garner (June 15, 1921 – January 2, 1977) was an American jazz pianist and composer known for his swing playing and ballads. His instrumental ballad " Misty", his best-known composition, has become a jazz standard. It was first r ...
, which did not happen; it was a late cancellation. In 1962, he became the resident political scriptwriter on the BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
satire show ''
That Was The Week That Was
''That Was the Week That Was'', informally ''TWTWTW'' or ''TW3'', is a satirical television comedy programme that aired on BBC Television in 1962 and 1963. It was devised, produced, and directed by Ned Sherrin and Jack (aka John) Duncan, and pr ...
'', notably contributing sketches on Home Secretary
Henry Brooke and Prime Minister Sir
Alec Douglas-Home which have often been cited as examples of the programme's outspoken style.
From 1964 he became a ''
Spectator'' columnist, writing on the press and TV, and in 1969 published ''The Neophiliacs: A Study of the Revolution in English Life in the Fifties and Sixties'', a highly critical analysis of the role played by fantasy in the political and social life of those decades. He was married to the novelist
Emma Tennant
Emma Christina Tennant FRSL (20 October 1937 – 21 January 2017) was an English novelist and editor of Scottish extraction, known for a post-modern approach to her fiction, often imbued with fantasy or magic. Several of her novels give a femi ...
between 1963 and 1968.
1970s
He married Christine Verity, his second wife, in 1972.
In the early 1970s, Booker campaigned against both the building of
tower blocks
A tower block, high-rise, apartment tower, residential tower, apartment block, block of flats, or office tower is a tall building, as opposed to a low-rise building and is defined differently in terms of height depending on the jurisdicti ...
and the wholesale redevelopment of Britain's cities according to the ideology of the
modernist
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
movement. In 1973, he published ''Goodbye London'' (written with
Candida Lycett Green
Candida Rose Lycett Green (née Betjeman; 22 September 194219 August 2014) was a British author who wrote sixteen books including ''English Cottages'', ''Goodbye London'', ''The Perfect English House'', ''Over the Hills and Far Away'' and ''The ...
), and, with Bennie Gray, was the IPC Campaigning Journalist of the Year. He made a documentary for the BBC in 1979 on modernist architecture, called ''City of Towers''. In the mid-1970s he contributed a regular quiz to
Melvyn Bragg's BBC literary programme ''Read All About It'', and he returned to ''The Spectator'' as a weekly contributor (1976–1981), when he also became a lead book-reviewer for ''The Sunday Telegraph''. In 1979, he married Valerie Patrick, his third wife, with whom he had two sons; they lived in
Somerset
( en, All The People of Somerset)
, locator_map =
, coordinates =
, region = South West England
, established_date = Ancient
, established_by =
, preceded_by =
, origin =
, lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset
, lord_ ...
.
1980s
In 1980, he published ''The Seventies: Portrait Of A Decade'', and covered the
Moscow Olympics
The 1980 Summer Olympics (russian: Летние Олимпийские игры 1980, Letniye Olimpiyskiye igry 1980), officially known as the Games of the XXII Olympiad (russian: Игры XXII Олимпиады, Igry XXII Olimpiady) and commo ...
for the ''
Daily Mail'', publishing ''The Games War: A Moscow Journal'' the following year. Between 1987 and 1990 he wrote ''The Daily Telegraph''s ''The Way of the World'' column (a satirical column originated by
Michael Wharton
Michael Wharton (19 April 1913 – 23 January 2006) was a British newspaper columnist who wrote under the pseudonym Peter Simple in the British '' Daily Telegraph''. He began work on the "Way of the World" column with illustrator Michael ffol ...
) as "Peter Simple II", and in 1990 swapped places with
Auberon Waugh
Auberon Alexander Waugh (17 November 1939 – 16 January 2001) was an English journalist and novelist, and eldest son of the novelist Evelyn Waugh. He was widely known by his nickname "Bron".
After a traditional classical education at Downsid ...
, after mocking Waugh who firmly requested he should write the column instead of Booker, to become a weekly columnist on ''The Sunday Telegraph'', where he remained until March 2019.
Between 1986 and 1990 he took part in a detailed investigation, chaired by Brigadier Tony Cowgill, of the charges that senior British politicians, including
Harold Macmillan, had been guilty of a serious
war crime in handing over thousands of Cossack and Yugoslav prisoners to the Communists at the end of the
war
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...
in 1945. Their report, published in 1990, presented those events in a very different light, and Booker later published a lengthy analysis of the controversy in ''A Looking Glass Tragedy'' (1997).
After 1990
From 1992 he focused more on the role played in British life by bureaucratic regulation and the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...
, forming a professional collaboration with Dr
Richard North, and they subsequently co-authored a series of books, including ''The Mad Officials: How The Bureaucrats Are Strangling Britain'' (1994); ''The Castle of Lies'' (1996); ''The Great Deception'' (2003), a critical history of the European Union; and ''Scared To Death: From BSE To Global Warming, Why Scares Are Costing Us The Earth '' (2007), a study of the part played in Western society in recent decades by the 'scare phenomenon'.
In 2004, he published ''
The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories'', a
Jungian
Analytical psychology ( de , Analytische Psychologie, sometimes translated as analytic psychology and referred to as Jungian analysis) is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science" ...
-influenced analysis of stories and their psychological meaning, on which he had been working for over 30 years. The book was dismissed by
Adam Mars-Jones, who objected to Booker employing his generalisations about conventional plot structures prescriptively: "He sets up criteria for art, and ends up condemning ''
Rigoletto
''Rigoletto'' is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the 1832 play '' Le roi s'amuse'' by Victor Hugo. Despite serious initial problems with the Austrian censors who had co ...
'', ''
The Cherry Orchard
''The Cherry Orchard'' (russian: Вишнёвый сад, translit=Vishnyovyi sad) is the last play by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. Written in 1903, it was first published by '' Znaniye'' (Book Two, 1904), and came out as a separate editio ...
'',
Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
,
Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel '' In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous E ...
,
Joyce,
Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typi ...
and
Lawrence
Lawrence may refer to:
Education Colleges and universities
* Lawrence Technological University, a university in Southfield, Michigan, United States
* Lawrence University, a liberal arts university in Appleton, Wisconsin, United States
Preparator ...
– the list goes on – while praising ''
Crocodile Dundee
''Crocodile Dundee'' (stylized as ''"Crocodile" Dundee'' in the U.S.) is a 1986 action comedy film set in the Australian Outback and in New York City. It stars Paul Hogan as the weathered Mick Dundee, and American actress Linda Kozlowski as ...
'', ''
ET'' and ''
Terminator 2''".
Fay Weldon
Fay Weldon CBE, FRSL (born Franklin Birkinshaw; 22 September 1931 – 4 January 2023) was an English author, essayist and playwright.
Over the course of her 55-year writing career, she published 31 novels, including ''Puffball'' (1980), '' Th ...
wrote "This is the most extraordinary, exhilarating book. It always seemed to me that 'the story' was God's way of giving meaning to crude creation. Booker now interprets the mind of God, and analyses not just the novel – which will never to me be quite the same again – but puts the narrative of contemporary human affairs into a new perspective. If it took its author a lifetime to write, one can only feel gratitude that he did it".
Roger Scruton
Sir Roger Vernon Scruton (; 27 February 194412 January 2020) was an English philosopher and writer who specialised in aesthetics and political philosophy, particularly in the furtherance of traditionalist conservative views.
Editor from 1982 ...
described it as a "brilliant summary of story-telling".
Views
Booker's weekly columns in ''
The Sunday Telegraph
''The Sunday Telegraph'' is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in February 1961 and published by the Telegraph Media Group, a division of Press Holdings.
It is the sister paper of ''The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', kn ...
'' covered a wide range of topics of public interest. He has been described by British columnist
James Delingpole
James Mark Court Delingpole (born 6 August 1965) is an English writer, journalist, and columnist who has written for a number of publications, including the '' Daily Mail'', the '' Daily Express'', ''The Times'', ''The Daily Telegraph'', and ' ...
in ''The Spectator'' as doing "the kind of proper, old-school things that journalists hardly ever bother with in this new age of aggregation and flip bloggery: he digs, he makes the calls, he reads the small print, he takes up the cause of the little man and campaigns, he speaks truth to power without fear or favour".
On a range of health issues, Booker put forward a view that the public is being unnecessarily "scared", as detailed in his book ''Scared to Death''. Thus, he argues that
asbestos,
passive smoking
Passive smoking is the inhalation of tobacco smoke, called secondhand smoke (SHS), or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), by persons other than the intended "active" smoker. It occurs when tobacco smoke enters an environment, causing its inhalat ...
["scientific evidence to support hebelief that inhaling other people's smoke causes cancer simply does not exist" – Christopher Booker, 1 July 2007, ''Sunday Telegraph'']
Christopher Booker's notebook: All done with passive smoke and mirrors
/ref> and BSE
BSE may refer to:
Medicine
* Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad cow disease, a neurodegenerative disease of cattle
* Breast self-examination
Stock exchanges
* Bahrain Stock Exchange, Bahrain
* Baku Stock Exchange, Azerbaijan
* B ...
have not been shown to be dangerous. His articles on global warming have been challenged by George Monbiot
George Joshua Richard Monbiot ( ; born 27 January 1963) is a British writer known for his environmental and political activism. He writes a regular column for ''The Guardian'' and is the author of a number of books.
Monbiot grew up in Oxfordsh ...
of ''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
''.
Booker said that white asbestos is "chemically identical to talcum powder" and poses a "non-existent" risk to human health,Trade Descriptions Act
The Trade Descriptions Act 1968 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which prevents manufacturers, retailers or service industry providers from misleading consumers as to what they are spending their money on.
This law empowers t ...
of making false claims about his qualifications.
Global warming
Booker said that the Climate Change Act 2008
The Climate Change Act 2008 (c 27) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Act makes it the duty of the Secretary of State to ensure that the net UK carbon account for all six Kyoto greenhouse gases for the year 2050 is at ...
was "the most expensive piece of legislation ever put through Parliament", and likely to cost hundreds of billions over the next 40 years.International Conference on Climate Change
The International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC) is a conference series organized and sponsored by The Heartland Institute which aims to bring together those who "dispute that the science is settled on the causes, consequences, and poli ...
organised by The Heartland Institute
The Heartland Institute is an American conservative and libertarian public policy think tank known for its rejection of both the scientific consensus on climate change and the negative health impacts of smoking.
Founded in 1984, it worked wit ...
. In the autumn of 2009, he published '' The Real Global Warming Disaster''. The book, which became his best-selling work, claims that there is not actually a consensus on climate change, and postulates that the measures taken by governments to combat climate change "will turn out to be one of the most expensive, destructive, and foolish mistakes the human race has ever made".Philip Ball
Philip Ball (born 1962) is a British science writer. For over twenty years he has been an editor of the journal ''Nature'' for which he continues to write regularly. He now writes a regular column in '' Chemistry World''. He has contributed to ...
in ''The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...
'' as being as "the definitive climate sceptics' manual", in which "he has rounded up just about every criticism ever made of the majority scientific view that global warming, most probably caused by human activity, is under way, and presented them unchallenged".The Sunday Telegraph
''The Sunday Telegraph'' is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in February 1961 and published by the Telegraph Media Group, a division of Press Holdings.
It is the sister paper of ''The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', kn ...
'' in which they questioned whether Rajendra Pachauri
Rajendra Kumar Pachauri (20 August 1940 – 13 February 2020) was the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 2002 to 2015, during the fourth and fifth assessment cycles. Under his leadership the IPCC was awarded t ...
, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was using his position for personal gain,[George Monbio]
"Rajendra Pachauri innocent of financial misdealings but smears will continue"
''The Guardian'', 26 August 2010 with a follow-up ''Telegraph'' article in January 2010.[Christopher Booker and Richard Nort]
''Sunday Telegraph'', 17 January 2010 On 21 August 2010, ''The Daily Telegraph'' issued an apology,
''The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally.
It was f ...
'', 21 August 2010[ having reportedly paid legal fees running into six figures.][ Dr Pachauri described the statements against him as "another attempt by the climate sceptics to discredit the IPCC."
]
Family courts
Booker wrote a number of articles raising concerns about the Family Court system in England and Wales. Booker championed the cause of Victoria Haigh, bringing him into further conflict with the judiciary. Booker also championed the cause of Marie Black, who fled the UK with her partner and daughter in order to evade social services.
Death
Booker died on 3 July 2019. On 12 July he was featured in the BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
obituary programme ''Last Word
''Last Word'' is an obituary BBC radio series broadcast weekly on Radio 4. Each week the lives of several famous people who have recently died are summarised with narration, and interviews with people who knew them. The programme is normally pr ...
.''
Bibliography
*''The Neophiliacs: A Study of the Revolution in English Life in the Fifties and Sixties'' (1969).
*''Goodbye London'' (with Candida Lycett Green
Candida Rose Lycett Green (née Betjeman; 22 September 194219 August 2014) was a British author who wrote sixteen books including ''English Cottages'', ''Goodbye London'', ''The Perfect English House'', ''Over the Hills and Far Away'' and ''The ...
) (1979).
*''The Seventies: Portrait Of A Decade'' (1980).
*''The Games War: A Moscow Journal'' (1981).
*''The Mad Officials: How The Bureaucrats Are Strangling Britain'' (with Richard North, 1994).
*''The Castle of Lies: Why Britain Must get Out of Europe'' (with Richard North, 1996).
*''A Looking-Glass Tragedy. The Controversy Over The Repatriations From Austria in 1945'', London, United Kingdom, Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd, First Edition (1997).
*''The Great Deception
''The Great Deception'' is a 1926 American silent drama film starring Basil Rathbone, Ben Lyon, and Aileen Pringle. It is based on the 1915 novel ''The Yellow Dove'' by George Gibbs about World War I era espionage, previously adapted as the ...
'' (with Richard North, 2003), London: Continuum Publishing
Continuum International Publishing Group was an academic publisher of books with editorial offices in London and New York City. It was purchased by Nova Capital Management in 2005. In July 2011, it was taken over by Bloomsbury Publishing. , all ...
.
*'' The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories'' (2004).
*''Scared To Death: From BSE To Global Warming, Why Scares Are Costing Us The Earth'' (with Richard North, 2007), London: Continuum. .
*''Climategate to Cancun: The Real Global Warming Disaster Continues...'' (with Richard North, 2010), London: Continuum.
*
*''Groupthink: A Study in Self Delusion'' ( 2020), London: Bloomsbury. .
References
External links
Christopher Booker
at telegraph.co.uk
{{DEFAULTSORT:Booker, Christopher
1937 births
2019 deaths
English male journalists
Non-fiction environmental writers
People educated at The Dragon School
People educated at Shrewsbury School
Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
Private Eye contributors
The Daily Telegraph people
The Spectator people
Daily Mail journalists
Tennant family
20th-century English businesspeople