John Kampfner

John Kampfner’s background

John 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, before becoming Editor of the New Statesman where he took the magazine to 30-year circulation highs.

He won the journalist of the year award for a two-part BBC film on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, called “The Ugly War”.

He now writes weekly for the Times and appears regularly in other newspapers such as the FT, Guardian and New European. He frequently appears on the BBC and Sky.

His latest BBC radio documentary, Analysis: The Smack of Firm Leadership, broadcast on Radio 4 on June 8. With guests including Francis Fukuyama (he of “End of History” fame), it looked at whether the pandemic has helped democracies or authoritarian regimes.

John’s new book, Why the Germans Do It Better, is his sixth book published by Atlantic and is already being optioned for serialisation by three national newspapers. His previous 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 and The Rich, from Slaves to Superyachts, A 2000-Year History.

He is a Senior Associate Fellow at the defence and security think tank, the Royal United Service Institute. He’ll shortly bring out a research paper on Russian and German influence – from cyber to organised crime – in Germany and across Europe.

He speaks fluent Russian and German and conversational French and Spanish.