Peter George James Jenkins (11 May 1934 – 27 May 1992) was a British journalist and Associate Editor of The Independent. During his career he wrote regular columns for The Guardian, The Sunday Times as well as the The Independent.
Jenkins was educated at Culford School and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he took a BA in History. He began his career as a journalist with the Financial Times (1958-60) and progressed to The Guardian where he was variously their Labour Correspondent (1963-67), Washington Correspondent (1972-74), and Political Commentator and Policy Editor (1974-85). He was political columnist for The Sunday Times between 1985-87 and Associate Editor of The Independent from 1987 until his death.
He was committed to a vision of a European Britain, anti-communist, but more socially inclusive than the American model of society. He belonged to a group of "Königswinter journalists", who —meeting with politicians and civil servants in Königswinter near Bonn, the then West German capital— attempted to build a pan-European group of opinion-formers, leaving behind the enmities of the past and looking forward to European community.
Jenkins was also Theatre Critic for The Spectator between 1978-81 and his first stage play, Illuminations, was performed at the Lyric, Hammersmith in 1980. He also wrote the comedy series Struggle (broadcast on Channel 4 from 1983-1984), a satire on the Conservative - Labour battles in local government at the time.[1]
Peter Jenkins was a visiting Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. Awards included Granada TV Journalist of the Year, 1978. His daughter is Amy Jenkins, author of the 1990s TV serial about twentysomething lawyers, This Life. After the death of his first wife, he married fellow journalist Polly Toynbee.
Moreover some of his work has been collected in an edited book:
Marr, Andrew. My trade. A short history of British journalism. London: Pan Macmillan, 2005. (p. 354 ff.)