Peter Stothard
Sir Peter Stothard (born 28 February 1951) is a British author, journalist and critic. From 1992 to 2002 he was editor of The Times and from 2002 to 2016 editor of The Times Literary Supplement, the only journalist to have held both roles. His four books of diaries cover both political and classical themes.
He was the son of Max Stothard, an electrical engineer who worked at the Marconi Research Centre, Great Baddow. He grew up on the nearby Rothmans Estate.[1] He was educated at Brentwood School, Essex (1962–68) and Trinity College, Oxford, where he became editor of Oxford University student newspaper Cherwell, after which he joined the BBC and wrote for the New Statesman, New Society and Plays and Players. He joined The Sunday Times in 1978 and The Times in 1981 where he was chief leader writer, deputy editor and US editor, based in Washington. He was knighted for services to the newspaper industry in 2003. He published Thirty Days: An Inside Account of Tony Blair at War (HarperCollins, 2010, ISBN 978-0-06-058262-3) in 2004 which was based on observations inside Downing Street during the Iraq War.
During Stothard's editorship, The Times reached a circulation of more than 900,000 - the highest in its history. This was, in part, the result of the so-called "price war" that started in 1993 when The Times reduced its cover price and started intense circulation battles against The Daily Telegraph and The Independent.
In 1999 he became involved in a controversial legal dispute over political funding with the Conservative Party Treasurer, Michael Ashcroft. Lord Ashcroft sued but subsequently withdrew his suit after a statement agreed by both parties.
Stothard was named as Editor of the Year in the same year by Granada Television's What the Papers Say.
In 2000 he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and was away from The Times for 10 months for successful treatment.
Since becoming editor of The Times Literary Supplement he has written mainly on Greek and Roman literature. In 2013 he was awarded the President’s Medal of the British Academy for services to the humanities.[2]
In 2010 his first book of memoir On the Spartacus Road (HarperPress, 2011, 978-0-00-734084) combined an account of the Spartacus uprising with elements of autobiography. His second, Alexandria, The Last Nights of Cleopatra (Granta, 2012, 978-1-84708-703-5), extended the same form, including accounts of newspaper life alongside the story of his engagement with Greece, Rome and Egypt. Alexandria won the 2013 Criticos Prize for literature on themes from ancient or modern Greece.
The Senecans: Four men and Margaret Thatcher, his memoir of the 1980s and '90s, is due to be published in September 2016.
He was chairman of judges for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction (2012) and President of the Classical Association.[2]
He is married to the novelist and travel writer Sally Emerson and has a son, Michael (born 1987), and a daughter, the novelist Anna Stothard (born 1983).[3]
Stothard appears as a character briefly in the first scene of a one-level Tomb Raider expansion videogame made by Core Design in association with The Times.[4] The expansion is called Times Exclusive Level and was released in 2000.
Bibliography
Book reviews
| Date | Review article | Work(s) reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Stothard, Peter (November 2015). "Margaret Thatcher and the Britain she left behind". The Times Literary Supplement. | Moore, Charles (2011). Margaret Thatcher. Allen Lane. ISBN 9780713992885. |
| Date | Review article | Work(s) reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Stothard, Peter (April 2015). "How the Romans went about their business". Spectator. | Koloski-Ostrow, Ann Olga (2015). The Archaeology of Sanitation in Roman Italy : Toilets, Sewers, and Water Systems. The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9781469621289. |
| Date | Review article | Work(s) reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Stothard, Peter (May 2015). "Cities on the bay". The Times Literary Supplement. | Hughes, Jessica (2015). Remembering Parthenope. OUP. ISBN 9780199673933. |
| Date | Review article | Work(s) reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Stothard, Peter (July 2015). "Antonia Fraser's summer afternoons". The Times Literary Supplement. | Fraser, Antonia (2015). My History. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 9780297871903. |
| Date | Review article | Work(s) reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Stothard, Peter (March 2012). "The Ancient Art Of Fooling Voters". Wall Street Journal. | Cicero, Quintus Tullius (2015). How to Win an Election. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691154084. |
| Date | Review article | Work(s) reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Stothard, Peter (November 2014). "All the roads to Waterloo". The Times Literary Supplement. | Uglow, Jenny (2014). In These Times : Living in Britain through Napoleon’s wars, 1793–1815. Faber. ISBN 9780571269525. |
| Date | Review article | Work(s) reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| 2011 | Stothard, Peter (September 2011). "The old BC/AD, BCE/CE : errors abound in Robert Hughes' history of Rome". Australian Book Review. 334: 8–9. | Hughes, Robert (2011). Rome. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 9780297844648. |
References
- ↑ Stothard, Peter (Winter 2009). "Essex Clay". Granta. Retrieved 13 July 2013.
- 1 2 "British Academy President's Medal Awarded to Sir Peter Stothard". The British Academy. 2013. Retrieved 1 May 2014.
- ↑ Nick Clark, "The bionic book worm", The Independent, 24 September 2012.
- ↑ "Times Exclusive Level: FMV Transcripts".
External links
| Media offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Charles Wilson |
Deputy Editor of The Times 1986–1992 |
Succeeded by John Bryant |
| Preceded by Simon Jenkins |
Editor of The Times 1992-2002 |
Succeeded by Robert Thomson |