Phillip Knightley

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Phillip Knightley (born January 23, 1929) is a multi-award winning journalist, critic, and non-fiction author, visiting Professor of Journalism at the University of Lincoln, England, and media commentator on the intelligence services and propaganda.

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[edit] Biography

Born in Sydney, Australia, he began his career there in 1946 as a copyboy with the Daily Telegraph. Two years as a cadet reporter with the Northern Star (Lismore) followed. He then temporarily left journalism to become a copra trader in Fiji before joining the Oceania Daily News (Suva), which prided itself as being the "First Paper Published in the World Today" because of Suva's proximity to the International Dateline.

Knightley returned to Australia and went to work for the Herald (Melbourne). He moved to Sydney in 1952 to join the city's Daily Mirror and covered the Queen's visit to Australia in 1953/1954.

He left for London in November 1954 as foreign correspondent for the Daily Mirror, and then went to India as managing editor of the Bombay (Mumbai) literary magazine, Imprint.

Returning to the UK in 1965, he became a special correspondent for the London Sunday Times, remaining there until 1985. During this time he was one of the leaders of its Insight investigative team.

Since retiring from the Sunday Times, he has contributed literary criticism to the Mail on Sunday (London), The Independent (London), The Australian's Review of Books, The Age (Melbourne), and the New York Review of Books.

He has lectured on journalism, law, and war at the Australian National Press Club in Canberra, the Australian Senate, City University, London, University of Manchester, Pennsylvania State University, University of California Los Angeles, Stanford University, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the Inner Temple, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and to the University of Dusseldorf.

Knightley's main professional interests have been war reporting, propaganda, and espionage. In more than 30 years of writing about espionage he has met most of the spy chiefs of all the major intelligence services in the world, and interviewed numerous officers and agents from all sides during the Cold War and since.

Knightley is married with three grown-up children, and lives in London, Sydney and Goa.

[edit] Awards and honours

  • 1980, 1988 – British Press Awards Journalist of the Year - one of only two journalists to have won the honor twice
  • 1982 – British Colour Magazine Writer of the Year
  • 1983 – British Chef and Brewer Crime Writer's award - for his investigation into a murder case in Italy
  • 1980 – Granada Television Reporter of the Year
  • 1975 – Overseas Press Club of America Award for The First Casualty as the best book on foreign affairs.
  • 2006 – City University, London, Artes Doctor Honoris Causa (Honorary Doctor of Arts) for Services to Journalism and Authorship.
  • 2007 – University of Sydney, Australia, Doctor Honoris Causa (Honorary Doctor of Letters) for Services to Journalism and Authorship.

In 1997, Knightley was a judge for Canada's Lionel Gelber Prize, which honours the world's best book on international relations. He is the European representative on the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and patron of the C.W. Bean Foundation in Canberra. He was made a member of the Order of Australia in the Queen's Birthday Honours list in June 2005, for "services to journalism and as an author".

[edit] Publications

Phillip Knightley is the author of the following non-fiction books:

  • The First Casualty on war and propaganda – in the United States, the Book of the Month Club main choice;
  • The Second Oldest Profession on espionage – in the United States, a History Club alternative choice; and
  • Philby, KGB Master Spy, his biography of Kim Philby; Knightley was the first and last journalist to interview the famous KGB spy in Moscow in 1988.

His other books are:

  • An Affair of State about the 1963 John Profumo scandal in Britain, publication of which was banned in the United Kingdom;
  • The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia;
  • A Pearl of Days, the history of the Sunday Times;
  • Suffer the Children, about the Thalidomide tragedy;
  • The Death of Venice on attempts to save Venice from permanent flooding;
  • The Rise and Fall of the House of Vestey on the business empire established by Sir William (later Baron) Vestey in 1897;
  • A Hack’s Progress, his autobiography; and
  • Australia: A Biography of a Nation.

[edit] External links

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