Will Hutton

Although born in Woolwich, where his father had worked at the Royal Ordnance factory (Royal Arsenal), Hutton began his education in Scotland. He went to Bishopton Primary School in Bishopton, Renfrewshire, then Paisley Grammar School when he was eight. His father moved to Bromley, then in Kent, and he attended Southborough Lane County Primary School in Petts Wood.[2]

Hutton studied at Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School in Sidcup, where he was introduced to A level economics by a teacher, Garth Pinkney. He only got average marks at O-level, but enjoyed the sixth form more, studying geography, history and economics. He also organised the school tennis team. After studying sociology and economics at the University of Bristol[3] gaining a BSocSc (2.1), he started his career as an equity salesman for a stock broker, before leaving to study for an MBA at INSEAD at Fontainebleau near Paris.

Hutton (right) with Vince Cable in 2013

Hutton moved on to work in television and radio. He spent ten years with the BBC, including working as economics correspondent for Newsnight from 1983 to 1988, where he replaced Peter Hobday.[4] He spent four years as editor-in-chief at The Observer and director of the Guardian National Newspapers before joining the Industrial Society, now known as The Work Foundation, as chief executive in 2000. In 2010 he was criticised for his handling of the Industrial Society by a number of publications including The Sunday Times and Private Eye, for having used the company for campaigning purposes rather than focusing on it as a business enterprise. The Work Foundation ceased to be financially viable and was sold to Lancaster University.[5]

As well as a columnist, author and chief executive, Hutton is a governor of London School of Economics, a visiting professor at the University of Manchester Business School and the University of Bristol, a visiting fellow at Mansfield College Oxford, a shareholder of the Scott Trust Limited which owns the Guardian Media Group, rapporteur of the Kok Group and a member of the Design Council's Millennium Commission.[6] In March 2011, he was appointed as Principal of Hertford College, Oxford,[7] taking up the post later in the year and retiring in 2020.[8] He continues to be associated with the Work Foundation as chair-designate of a major new initiative on innovation. He sits on the European Advisory Board of Princeton University Press.[9]

As an author, his best known and most influential works are The State We're In (an economic and political look at Britain in the 1990s from a social democratic point of view) and The World We're In, in which he expanded his focus to include the relationship between the United States and Europe, emphasising cultural and social differences between the two blocs and analysing the UK as sitting between the two.[10]

Hutton's book The Writing on the Wall was released in the UK in January 2007. The book examines Western concerns and responses to the rise of China and the emerging global division of labour, and argues that the Chinese economy is running up against a set of increasingly unsustainable contradictions that could have a damaging universal fallout. On 18 February 2007, Hutton was a featured guest in BBC's Have Your Say programme discussing the implications of China's growth. The analysis in his books is characterised by a support for the European Union and its potential, alongside a disdain for what he calls American conservatism – defined, among other factors, as a certain attitude to markets, property and the social contract. In 1992, he won the What The Papers Say award for Political Journalist of the Year. In 2003 he was made an honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD) by the University of Bristol.

His latest book, Them and Us: Changing Britain – Why We Need a Fair Society, was published by Little, Brown.

Hutton married Jane Atkinson, the daughter of a neurosurgeon, in 1978, and lives in London. They have two daughters and a son. His wife was a director of a property development company called First Premise based in Richmond upon Thames, which she founded in 1987. Hutton calls himself an agnostic.[11]

• 1996: Honorary Doctor of Letters Kingston University[12]
• 1999: Honorary Degree Staffordshire University[13]
• 2003: Honorary Doctor of Laws University of Bristol[14]
• 2003: Honorary Doctor of Laws Glasgow Caledonian University[15]
• 2006: Honorary Doctor of Civil Law University of East Anglia[16]
• 2011: Honorary Doctorate Middlesex University[17]
• 2011: Honorary Fellowship University of Central Lancashire[18]
• 2013: Honorary Doctor of Laws University of Greenwich[19]
• 2014: Honorary Doctor of Letters York St John University[20]

• China and the West in the 21st Century 1 June 2007 Speech at the Australian National University
• The Observer columns by Will Hutton
• Will Hutton's Profile at the London Speaker Bureau
• At Unions21 in September 2008 on YouTube
• The Orwell Prize 2008 on YouTube
• Institute of Directors Conference 2007 on YouTube
• The Great Debate: What is radical poltiics today? Discussion with Anthony Giddens and Jonathan Pugh, December 2008
• Lateline - 18-Apr-2011 Hutton on April 2011 Lateline on China's economic bubble.
• Lateline - 15-Oct-2008 Interview with Tony Jones in October 2008.