John Paul Kampfner (born 27 December 1962) is a British journalist who was editor of the weekly political magazine the New Statesman between 2005 and 2008. During that time he took the magazine's circulation to a 30-year high, winning a string of awards including Current Affairs Editor of the Year in 2006.
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Kampfner was educated at Westminster School, a boys' independent school in London and at The Queen's College, Oxford where he did a BA in Modern History and Russian.
Kampfner was a foreign correspondent in Moscow and Berlin for nearly a decade, for Reuters from 1984-99 and the Daily Telegraph from 1989-91. Subsequently he became a political correspondent and commentator for the Financial Times and the BBC, and the political editor of the New Statesman before he became editor.
He became Chief Executive of Index on Censorship in 2008. He is also Chair of Turner Contemporary, the largest visual arts project in the south-east of England outside London (in Margate).
Additionally, Kampfner has contributed several BBC documentaries, his two-part series on the Middle Eastern conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, The Dirty War, won him Journalist of the Year and Film of the Year from the Foreign Press Association in 2002.
As an author Kampfner's works include Inside Yeltsin's Russia: Corruption, Conflict, Capitalism, a biography of former Labour Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, and a study of Tony Blair's interventionist foreign policy Blair's Wars. His most recent publication released in early September 2009 was titled Freedom For Sale: How We Made Money And Lost Our Liberty and is an analysis of the seeming abandonment of liberty in the names of democracy and capitalism. The book was shortlisted for the Orwell Book prize in May 2010.
Kampfner married the BBC journalist Lucy Ash in 1992. The couple have two children and live in London. He is a big Chelsea fan.
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| Preceded by Peter Wilby |
Editor of the New Statesman 2005-2008 |
Succeeded by Jason Cowley |