Paul Bede JohnsonCBE (2 November 1928 – 12 January 2023) was an English journalist,
popular historian, speechwriter and author. Although associated with the political left in his early career, he became a popular conservative historian.
Johnson was educated at the
Jesuit independent school
Stonyhurst College, and at
Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied
history.[1] He first came to prominence in the 1950s as a journalist writing for and later editing the New Statesman magazine. A prolific writer, Johnson wrote more than 50 books and contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers.[2] His sons include the journalist
Daniel Johnson, founder of Standpoint magazine, and the businessman
Luke Johnson, former chairman of
Channel 4.
Early life and career
Johnson was born in
Manchester. His father, William Aloysius Johnson, was an artist and principal of the Art School in Burslem,
Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. At
Stonyhurst College, Johnson received an education grounded in the
Jesuit method,[3] which he preferred over the more secularised curriculum of Oxford. While at Oxford, Johnson was tutored by the historian
A. J. P. Taylor[4] and was a member of the exclusive
Stubbs Society.
Johnson adopted a left-wing political outlook during this period as he witnessed in May 1952 the police response to a riot in Paris (Communists were rioting over the visit of American general,
Matthew Ridgway, who commanded the US Eighth Army during the
Korean War; he had just been appointed
NATO's Supreme Commander in Europe), the "ferocity [of which] I would not have believed had I not seen it with my own eyes."[6] Then he served as the New Statesman's Paris correspondent. For a time, he was a convinced
Bevanite and an associate of
Aneurin Bevan himself. Moving back to London in 1955, Johnson joined the Statesman's staff.[7]
Some of Johnson's writing already showed signs of iconoclasm. His first book, about the
Suez War, appeared in 1957. An anonymous commentator in The Spectator wrote that "one of his [Johnson's] remarks about
Mr Gaitskell is quite as damaging as anything he has to say about Sir
Anthony Eden", but the
Labour Party's opposition to the Suez intervention led Johnson to assert "the old militant spirit of the party was back".[8] The following year he attacked
Ian Fleming's
James Bond novel Dr No,[9] and in 1964 he warned of "The Menace of Beatlism"[10] in an article contemporarily described as being "rather exaggerated" by
Henry Fairlie in The Spectator.[11]
Johnson was successively lead writer, deputy editor and editor of the New Statesman from 1965 to 1970. He was found suspect for his attendances at the soirées of
Lady Antonia Fraser, who was at the time married to a
conservative MP. There was some resistance to Johnson's appointment as New Statesman editor, not least from the writer
Leonard Woolf, who objected to a Catholic filling the position, and Johnson was placed on six months' probation.[12]
Statesmen and Nations (1971), the anthology of his Statesman articles, contains numerous reviews of biographies of conservative politicians and an openness to continental Europe; in one article Johnson took a positive view of events of
May 1968 in Paris, leading
Colin Welch in The Spectator to accuse Johnson of possessing "a taste for violence".[13] According to this book, Johnson filed 54 overseas reports during his Statesman years.
During the late 1970s, Johnson began writing articles in the New Statesman attacking trade unions in particular, and leftism in general. Slightly later, the New Statesman may have repudiated this, when it published an article criticising him, in a series of articles "Windbags of the West" about various right-wing journalists.
From 1981 to 2009, Johnson wrote a column for The Spectator; initially focusing on media developments, it subsequently acquired the title "And Another Thing". In his journalism, Johnson generally dealt with issues and events which he saw as indicative of a
general social decline, whether in art, education, religious observance or personal conduct. He continued to contribute to the magazine, although less frequently than before.[14] During the same period he contributed a column to the Daily Mail until 2001. In a Daily Telegraph interview in November 2003, he criticised the Mail for having a pernicious impact: "I came to the conclusion that that kind of journalism is bad for the country, bad for society, bad for the newspaper."[15]
Johnson was active in the campaign, led by
Norman Lamont, to prevent Pinochet's extradition to Spain after
his 1998 arrest in London. "There have been countless attempts to link him to
human rights atrocities, but nobody has provided a single scrap of evidence", Johnson was reported as saying in 1999.[28] In Heroes (2008),[26] Johnson returned to his longstanding claim that criticism of Pinochet's dictatorship on human rights grounds came from "the Soviet Union, whose propaganda machine successfully demonised [Pinochet] among the chattering classes all over the world. It was the last triumph of the KGB before it vanished into history's dustbin."[29]
Johnson described France as "a republic run by bureaucratic and party elites, whose errors are dealt with by strikes, street riots and blockades" rather than a democracy.[30]
Johnson was a
Eurosceptic who played a prominent role in the "No" campaign during the
1975 referendum on whether Britain should stay in the EC. In 2010 Johnson noted that "you can't have a common currency without a common financial policy, and you can't have that without a common government. The three things are interconnected. So this [European integration] was entirely foreseeable. Not much careful thought and judgment goes into the EU. It's entirely run by bureaucrats."[31]
Paul Johnson was married from 1958 to the psychotherapist and former Labour Party parliamentary candidate Marigold Hunt, daughter of Thomas Hunt, physician to
Winston Churchill,
Clement Attlee, and
Anthony Eden. They had three sons and a daughter: the journalist
Daniel Johnson,[32] a freelance writer, editor of Standpoint magazine, and previously associate editor of The Daily Telegraph;
Luke Johnson,[32] businessman and former chairman of Channel 4 Television; Sophie Johnson-Clark, an independent television executive; and Cosmo Johnson, playwright. Paul and Marigold Johnson have ten grandchildren. Marigold Johnson's sister, Sarah, married the journalist, former diplomat, and politician
George Walden; their daughter,
Celia Walden, is married to television presenter and former newspaper editor
Piers Morgan.[33]
In 1998, it was revealed Johnson had an affair lasting eleven years with Gloria Stewart, a freelance journalist, who recorded them together in his study "at the behest of a British tabloid";[34][35][36] she first claimed to have made the affair public because she objected to Johnson's hypocrisy about religion and family values, but later acknowledged that their affair had ended when Johnson "found another girlfriend".[37]
Johnson's books are listed by subject or type. The country of publication is the UK, unless stated otherwise.
Anthologies, polemics and contemporary history
Johnson, Paul Bede; Abel-Smith, Brian; Calder, Nigel; Hoggart, Richard; Jones, Mervyn; Marris, Peter; Murdoch, Iris; Shore, Peter; Thomas, Hugh; Townsend, Peter; Williams, Raymond (1957), "A Sense of Outrage", in Mackenzie, Norman Ian (ed.), Conviction, London: MacGibbon & Kee, pp. 202–17.
Johnson, Paul Bede (1957), The Suez War, London: MacGibbon & Kee.
——— (1958), Journey into Chaos, Western Policy in the Middle East, London: MacGibbon & Kee.
——— (1971), Statesmen and Nations, Sidgwick & Jackson. An anthology of New Statesman articles from the 1950s and 1960s.
——— (1977), Enemies of Society, Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
——— (1980), The Recovery of Freedom, Mainstream, Basil Blackwell.
——— (1981), Davis, William (ed.), The Best of Everything – Animals, Business, Drink, Travel, Food, Literature, Medicine, Playtime, Politics, Theatre, Young World, Art, Communications, Law and Crime, Films, Pop Culture, Sport, Women's Fashion, Men's Fashion, Music, Military – contributor.
——— (1985), The Pick of Paul Johnson, Harrap.
——— (1991) [1986], The Oxford Book of Political Anecdotes (2nd ed.), Oxford University Press.
——— (1988), Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky, Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
1994 The Quotable Paul Johnson A Topical Compilation of His Wit, Wisdom and Satire (George J. Marlin, Richard P. Rabatin,
Heather Higgins (Editors)) 1994 Noonday Press/1996 Atlantic Books (US)
1994 Wake Up Britain – a Latter-day Pamphlet Weidenfeld & Nicolson
1996 To Hell with Picasso & Other Essays: Selected Pieces from "The Spectator" Weidenfeld & Nicolson
1993: Gerald Laing : Portraits Thomas Gibson, Fine Art Ltd (with Gerald Laing & David Mellor MP)
1999: Julian Barrow's London, Fine Art Society
2003: Art: A New History, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
History
1972: The Offshore Islanders: England's People from Roman Occupation to the Present/to European Entry [1985 edn as History of the English People; 1998 edn as Offshore Islanders: A History of the English People], Weidenfeld & Nicolson
1974: Elizabeth I: A Study in Power and Intellect, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
1974: The Life and Times of Edward III, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
1976: Civilizations of the Holy Land, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
1976: A History of Christianity, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
1977: Education of an Establishment, in The World of the Public School (pp. 13–28), edited by George MacDonald Fraser, Weidenfeld & Nicolson/St Martins Press (US edition)
1978: The Civilization of Ancient Egypt, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
1981: Ireland: A Concise History from the Twelfth Century to the Present Day [as ...Land of Troubles, 1980, Eyre Methuen] Granada
1983: A History of the Modern World from 1917 to the 1980s, Weidenfeld & Nicolson – Paperback[42]
2000: The Renaissance: A Short History, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
2002: Napoleon, Viking
2005: George Washington: The Founding Father (Eminent Lives Series), Atlas Books
2006: Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney, HarperCollins Publishers (US),
ISBN0-06-019143-0
2007: Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and De Gaulle, HarperCollins Publishers (US),
ISBN978-0-06-114316-8,
0-06-114316-2
2010: Humorists: From Hogarth to Noel Coward, HarperCollins Publishers (US),
ISBN978-0-06-182591-0
2011: Socrates: A Man For Our Times, Viking (US)
Memoirs
2004: The Vanished Landscape: A 1930s Childhood in the Potteries, Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
ISBN978-0-7538-1933-3
2010: Brief Lives, Hutchinson
Novels
1959: Left of Centre, MacGibbon & Kee ["Left of Centre describes the meeting of a Complacent Young Man with an Angry Old City"]
1964: Merrie England, MacGibbon & Kee
Religion
1975: Pope John XXIII Hutchinson
1977: A History of Christianity, Weidenfeld & Nicolson /1976, Simon & Schuster /Atheneum (US),
ISBN0-684-81503-6 (S&S Touchstone division paperback edition published in 1995)
1982: Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Restoration, St Martins Press
1996: The Quest for God: A Personal Pilgrimage, Weidenfeld & Nicolson/HarperCollins (US)
1997: The Papacy, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
2010: Jesus: A Biography From a Believer, Penguin Books
Travel
1973: The Highland Jaunt, Collins (with George Gale)
1974: A Place in History: Places & Buildings of British History, Omega [Thames TV (UK) tie-in]
1978: National Trust Book of British Castles, Granada Paperback [1992, Weidenfeld edn as Castles of England, Scotland And Wales]
1984: The Aerofilms Book of London from the Air, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
^Johnson, Paul Bede (5 April 1958), "Sex, Snobbery and Sadism", New Statesman, in Howe, Stephen, ed. (1988), Lines of Dissent: Writings from the "New Statesman", London: Verso, pp. 151–154
^
ab"Pinochet remains a hero to me because I know the facts" (from Heroes, cited by Richard Lourie
"Heroes Are People, Too"Archived 4 December 2018 at the
Wayback Machine, The Washington Post, 2 December 2007.
Robin Blackburn "A Fabian at the End of His Tether" (New Statesman 14 December 1979, reprinted in Stephen Howe (ed) Lines of Dissent: Writings from the New Statesman 1913–88 London: Verso, 1988, pp284–96
Christopher Booker The Seventies: Portrait of a Decade Allen Lane, 1980 (chapters: "Paul Johnson: The Convert Who Went over the Top" pp238–44 and "Facing the Catastrophe" pp304–7