James Delingpole

External images

Delingpole at a conference, 2010

James Mark Court Delingpole (born 1965) is an English columnist and novelist who writes for (among other publications) The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and The Spectator. He has published several novels and four political books. He describes himself as being a libertarian conservative.^[1]

Early life

Delingpole was born and raised in Alvechurch, Worcestershire, the son of a factory owner.^[2] He attended Malvern College, an independent school for boys,^[3] followed by Christ Church, Oxford, where he studied English Literature.^{[citation needed]} Delingpole has claimed that while at Oxford he was "reasonably good friends" with David Cameron and Boris Johnson.^[4][5]

Life and career

In addition to writing articles and commentary for The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and The Spectator, Delingpole has published four political books, including: How to be Right: The Essential Guide to Making Lefty Liberals History, Welcome to Obamaland: I Have Seen Your Future and It Doesn't Work, and 365 Ways to Drive a Liberal Crazy.

Delingpole is also the author of several novels including Fin and Thinly Disguised Autobiography. In August 2007, Bloomsbury published his first novel of the "Coward" series, Coward on the Beach, which tells the story of a man's reluctant quest for military glory and is set on the beaches of Normandy during the D-Day landings. In June 2009 the second novel of the series, Coward at the Bridge (set during Operation Market Garden in September 1944), was published.

Delingpole hosted the BBC Four documentary The British Upper Class in 2005.^[6][7] His style of writing for the book Welcome to Obamaland: I Have Seen Your Future and It Doesn't Work has been called an "engaging, witty writing style", and "This author is at least original and amusing" by John Wright.^[8] He is highly critical of the windfarm industry, and has called wind turbines "environmentally damaging" and that they deface the countryside.^[9]

In 2013 he described an article by a fellow journalist which attacked the views of columnist Suzanne Moore as giving her "such a seeing-to, she'll be walking bow-legged for weeks." Delingpole later apologised.^[10]

His most recent project is Bogpaper, a satirical blog he runs with Jan Skoyles.^[11][12]

Views on anthropogenic global warming

Delingpole has long disputed the findings of climate science on global warming. He has written "I am not a scientist and have never claimed to be," ^[13] and that he does not have a science degree, but is "a believer in empiricism and not spending taxpayers' money on a problem that may well not exist."^[14] In the Climatic Research Unit email controversy he is credited with being the first to publicise the term "Climategate", in a November 2009 Telegraph blog article claiming that it exposed the "conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth" ^[15] and could, he hoped, be "the final nail in the coffin of Anthropogenic Global Warming".^[15][14] In The Spectator, he called it "the greatest scientific scandal in the history of the world".^[16][17] In a speech at The Heartland Institute's May 2010 International Conference on Climate Change, he said this was "the story that would change my life and, quite possibly, save Western civilisation from the greatest threat it has ever known."^[16][18]

Delingpole does not dispute that global warming has occurred, but is a sceptic who doubts the extent to which it is man-made ("anthropogenic") or catastrophic.^{[19][20][21][22][23]}

In a BBC Horizon documentary, "Science under Attack", Delingpole responded to Paul Nurse's discussion of the scientific consensus on global warming by saying that the idea of a consensus is unscientific. In response to Nurse's question as to whether he had read any peer-reviewed papers, he maintained that as a journalist "it is not my job" to read peer reviewed papers, but be "an interpreter of interpretations". He took offence at Nurse's analogy that his position was like a medical patient refusing to accept a clear consensus of opinion of expert doctors, and preferring the diagnosis of a quack. After the programme was broadcast, Delingpole complained on his blog that other parts of the interview had been edited out.^[16]

Delingpole wrote an article in The Australian on 3 May 2012 with the title "Wind farm scam a huge cover-up".^[24] Three complaints were made, and the Australian Press Council upheld three aspects of the complaints, commenting on the "offensiveness" of the comment made by a New South Wales sheep farmer, which Delingpole quoted, that made an analogy between advocates of wind farms and paedophiles.^[25]

Awards and prizes

In 2005 Delingpole was awarded the Charles Douglas-Home Memorial Trust Award for his essay "What are museums for?"^[26]

In 2010, Delingpole won the Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism for his Telegraph blog, awarded by the free-market International Policy Network. Damian Thompson, the Telegraph's blog editor, linked the award to the impact of Delingpole's posts on the Climatic Research Unit email controversy. ^[27][28]

Politics

On 6 September 2012, Delingpole announced he would stand in the upcoming Corby by-election on an anti-wind farms platform.^[29] He withdrew, saying his campaign against wind farms had been "stunningly successful" before a vote was cast.^[30] A Greenpeace investigation said that Delingpole's campaign was supported by the Conservative Party's campaign manager for the Corby by-election, Chris Heaton-Harris. Heaton-Harris said that Delingpole had announced his candidacy as part of a "plan" to "cause some hassle" and drive the issue of wind farms up the political agenda.^[31]

Delingpole described himself "as a member of probably the most discriminated-against subsection in the whole of British society—the white, middle-aged, public-school-and-Oxbridge educated middle-class male," and followed with "The function of satire is not only to make us laugh, but also, with luck, to draw our attention to the things that are wrong with the world and help mock them into extinction."^[32]

Books

• Fish Show. Penguin Books Ltd. 1997. p. 208. ISBN 978-0-14-025746-5. 
• Fin. Picador USA. 2001. p. 161. ISBN 978-0-330-48045-1. 
• Thinly Disguised Autobiography. Picador USA. 2004. p. 480. ISBN 978-0-330-49335-2. 
• Coward on the Beach. Bloomsbury UK. 2007. p. 336. ISBN 978-0-7475-9070-5. 
• How to be Right. Headline Review. 2007. p. 224. ISBN 978-0-7553-1591-8. 
• Welcome to Obamaland: I Have Seen Your Future and It Doesn't Work. Regnery Publishing. 2009. p. 256. ISBN 978-1-59698-588-9. 
• Coward at the Bridge. Simon & Schuster Ltd. 2009. p. 400. ISBN 978-1-84737-358-8. 
• 365 Ways to Drive a Liberal Crazy. Washington, DC: Regnery Pub. 2011. ISBN 978-1-59698-642-8. 
• Watermelons: How Environmentalists are Killing the Planet, Destroying the Economy and Stealing your Children's Future. Biteback Publishing. 2012. p. 320. ISBN 978-1849544054. 

See also

• Global warming controversy

References

External links

• Personal website
• Blog at The Daily Telegraph
• Delingpole columns at The Spectator
• Delingpole columns at the Daily Mail
• Discussing Welcome to Obamaland at C-SPAN Washington Journal