Patrick Wright is a British writer, broadcaster and academic in the fields of cultural studies and

cultural history Cultural history combines the approaches of anthropology and history to examine popular cultural traditions and cultural interpretations of historical experience. It examines the records and narrative descriptions of past matter, encompassing the ...

. He was educated at the

University of Kent , motto_lang = , mottoeng = Literal translation: 'Whom to serve is to reign'(Book of Common Prayer translation: 'whose service is perfect freedom')Graham Martin, ''From Vision to Reality: the Making of the University of Kent at Canterbury'' ...

and

Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses, all in Greater Vancouver: Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, and Vancouver. The main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located ...

in British Columbia, Canada. He is Professor (emeritus) of Literature, History and Politics at King's College London, having previously worked at the Institute of Cultural Analysis of Nottingham Trent University, and as a fellow of the London Consortium. In the 1980s he worked for the

National Council for Voluntary Organisations The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) is the umbrella body for the voluntary and community sector in England. It is a registered charity (no 225922). NCVO works to support the voluntary and community sector and to create an ...

in London, and was self-employed as a writer, broadcaster and occasional consultant between 1987 and 2000. He has written for many journals and newspapers, including ''

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 ...

'', where he was a contracted feature writer in the early 1990s. More recently, he has held a Mellon Fellowship at

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...

and, together with Timothy Hyman, curated a major Stanley Spencer exhibition. He presented a BBC2 series ''The River'', about the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

, in 1999. Patrick Wright is a former presenter of Radio 3's arts programme ''

Night Waves ''Free Thinking'' is a radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 3 as part of their "After Dark" late night programming. The programme is a rebranded version of ''Night Waves'', "Radio 3's flagship arts and ideas programme". ''Night Waves'' was b ...

''. He is also known for his work on British heritage. He is the author of several books, many of which explore themes connected to England and Englishness, Psychogeography and cultural history, including ''The Village That Died for England'' and ''A Journey through Ruins: The Last Days of London''. His latest book, ''The Sea View Has Me Again: Uwe Johnson in Sheerness'', explores the East German writer

Uwe Johnson Uwe or UWE may refer to * Uwe (given name) * University of the West of England, Bristol * UML-based web engineering * University Würzburg's Experimental miniaturized satellites for space research UWE-1 and UWE-2 * Uwe - Wreck in Blankenese Blank ...

and his unexpected residence on the

Isle of Sheppey The Isle of Sheppey is an island off the northern coast of Kent, England, neighbouring the Thames Estuary, centred from central London. It has an area of . The island forms part of the local government district of Swale. ''Sheppey'' is derive ...

between 1974 and his death in 1984, taking his appreciation of "backwaters" as the basis for a consideration of deindustrialisation and its more recent consequences in England and elsewhere. It is published in December 2020 by

Repeater Books Repeater Books is a publishing imprint based in London, founded in 2014 by Tariq Goddard and Mark Fisher, formerly the founders of radical publishers Zero Books, along with Etan Ilfeld, Tamar Shlaim, Alex Niven and Matteo Mandarini. Formation ...

Bibliography

*''On Living in an Old Country'' (1985; revised and augmented edition 2009) *''A Journey through Ruins: The Last Days of

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

'' (1991; revised and augmented edition 2009) *''The Village That Died for England'' (about

Tyneham Tyneham is a ghost village abandoned in 1943 and former civil parish, now in the civil parish of Steeple with Tyneham, in south Dorset, England, near Lulworth on the Isle of Purbeck. In 2001 the civil parish had a population of 0. The civil ...

; 1995; revised and augmented edition 2002) *''The River: The Thames in Our Time'' (1999) *'' Tank: The Progress of a Monstrous War Machine'' (2000) *''Stanley Spencer'' (2001) with Timothy Hyman *''Iron Curtain: From Stage to Cold War'' (2007) () *''Passport to Peking: A Very British Mission to Mao's China'' (2010) () *''The Sea View Has Me Again: Uwe Johnson in Sheerness'' (2020,

) ()

References

External links

Official Home Page2010 interview
Academics of Nottingham Trent University British historians British writers Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Academics of King's College London British broadcasters Alumni of the University of Kent Simon Fraser University alumni The Guardian journalists {{UK-historian-stub