Simon Jenkins

After graduating from the University of Oxford, Jenkins initially worked at Country Life magazine, before joining the Times Educational Supplement.[3] He was then features editor and columnist on the Evening Standard before editing the Insight pages of The Sunday Times.[4][5] From 1976 to 1978 he was editor of the Evening Standard, before becoming political editor of The Economist from 1979 to 1986.[6] He edited The Times from 1990 to 1992,[7] and since then has been a columnist for The Times and The Guardian.[5][8] In 1998 he received the What the Papers Say Journalist of the Year award.[4]

In January 2005, he announced he was ending his 15-year association with The Times to write a book, before joining The Guardian as a columnist.[4] He retained a column at The Sunday Times and was a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post.[9] He gave up both on becoming chairman of the National Trust in 2008, when he also resumed an occasional column for the Evening Standard.[10]

In April 2009, The Guardian withdrew one of Jenkins' articles from its website after African National Congress leader and South African president-elect Jacob Zuma sued the paper for defamation.[11] The Guardian issued an apology,[12][13] and settled the libel case for an undisclosed sum.[14][15]

In February 2010, Jenkins argued in a Guardian article that the Falkland Islands are an example of anachronistic British colonialism and should be handed over to Argentinian sovereignty.[16] He said that they could be leased back under the supervision of the UN.[16] He stated that the 2,500 or so British islanders should not have "an unqualified veto on British government policy".[16]

In a piece in The Guardian in June 2010 he wrote that the government should "cut [defence], all £45 billion of it. ... With the end of the Cold War in the 1990s that threat [of global communism] vanished."[17] In August 2016 he wrote in The Guardian in support of NATO membership, saying: "It is a real deterrent, and its plausibility rests on the assurance of collective response".[18]

Jenkins voted for the UK to Remain within the European Union in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, arguing in The Guardian that leaving would provide Germany with dominance over the remainder of the union: "It would leave Germany effectively alone at the head of Europe, alternately hesitant and bullying".[19]

Jenkins has written several books on the politics, history and architecture of England, including England's Thousand Best Churches[20] and England's Thousand Best Houses.[5] In his 2011 book A Short History of England, he argued that the British Empire "was a remarkable institution that dismantled itself in good order",[21] and upon its publication he wrote in The Telegraph that "I have come to regard England as the most remarkable country in European history."[22]

Jenkins served on the boards of British Rail 1979–1990[6] and London Transport 1984–1986.[6] He was a member of the Millennium Commission from February 1994 to December 2000,[23] and has also sat on the Board of Trustees of The Architecture Foundation.[24] From 1985 to 1990, he was deputy chairman of English Heritage.[5]

In July 2008, it was announced that he had been chosen as the new chairman of the National Trust; he took over the three-year post from William Proby in November of that year.[25] He remained in the post until November 2014.[26]