Sir Simon David Jenkins FLSW (born 10 June 1943) is a British author, a newspaper columnist and editor. He was editor of the Evening Standard from 1976 to 1978 and of The Times from 1990 to 1992. Jenkins chaired the National Trust from 2008 to 2014. He currently writes columns for The Guardian.

Early life

Jenkins was born June 10, 1943, in Birmingham, England. His father, Daniel Thomas Jenkins, was a Welsh professor of systematic theology at Princeton Theological Seminary and a Minister in the Congregational and then United Reformed Church. He was educated at Mill Hill School and St John's College, Oxford, where he earned a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

Career

Journalism

After graduating from the University of Oxford, Jenkins initially worked at Country Life magazine, before joining the Times Educational Supplement. He was then features editor and columnist on the Evening Standard before editing the Insight pages of The Sunday Times. From 1976 to 1978 he was editor of the Evening Standard, before becoming political editor of The Economist from 1979 to 1986. He edited The Times from 1990 to 1992, and since then has been a columnist for The Times and The Guardian. In 1998 he received the What the Papers Say Journalist of the Year award. In January 2005, he announced he was ending his 15-year association with The Times to write a book, before joining The Guardian as a columnist. He retained a column at The Sunday Times and was a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post. He gave up both on becoming chairman of the National Trust in 2008, when he also resumed an occasional column for the Evening Standard.

Opinions

In April 2009, The Guardian withdrew one of Jenkins's articles from its website after African National Congress leader and South African president-elect Jacob Zuma sued the paper for defamation. The Guardian issued an apology, and settled the libel case for an undisclosed sum. In February 2010, Jenkins argued in a Guardian article that British control over the Falkland Islands was an "expensive legacy of empire" and should be handed over to the Argentinian government. He argued that they could be leased back under the supervision of the United Nations and that the 2,500 or so Falkland Islanders should not have "an unqualified veto on British government policy". In a piece in The Guardian in June 2010 he wrote that the government should "cut [defence], all £45 billion of it. ... With the end of the Cold War in the 1990s that threat [of global communism] vanished." In August 2016 he wrote in The Guardian in support of NATO membership, saying: "It is a real deterrent, and its plausibility rests on the assurance of collective response". Jenkins voted for the UK to Remain within the European Union in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, arguing in The Guardian that leaving would provide Germany with dominance over the remainder of the union: "It would leave Germany effectively alone at the head of Europe, alternately hesitant and bullying". Soon after Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, Jenkins wrote that his aides were "young, sneakered, tieless image-makers, and fiercely loyal to him." They were "special advisers, thinktanks and lobby groups isolated from the world outside." Jenkins has consistently argued against Western military intervention and support in the conflict in Ukraine. Before the outbreak of full invasion in January 2022, amid heightened tensions, Jenkins wrote a pair of columns arguing that the United Kingdom should stay out of the "border dispute", one he argues is a direct result of 'NATO expansionism'. In 2023, he wrote a column discouraging the supplying of jets as military aid. In early 2024, he wrote that NATO was growing reckless in the conflict, as the war reached a "predictable stalemate". Jenkins has been criticized for his opinions on Ukraine by many journalists and commentators, examples including Mark Laity and Oz Katerji. In May 2024, following the local elections, he wrote calling metro mayors a "farce of local democracy" advocating their abolition.

Books

Jenkins has written several books on the politics, history and architecture of England, including England's Thousand Best Churches and England's Thousand Best Houses. In his 2011 book A Short History of England, he argued that the British Empire "was a remarkable institution that dismantled itself in good order". In 2022, Jenkins's book, The Celts: A Sceptical History, stoked some controversy on account of his incredulous view of the Celts as a distinct cultural entity. The release of the work was met with a number of hostile reviews from specialists in Celtic studies, with these critics of the book alleging factual errors in the work as well as of the misrepresentation of sources.

Public appointments

Jenkins served on the boards of British Rail 1979–1990 and London Transport 1984–1986. He was a member of the Millennium Commission from February 1994 to December 2000, and has also sat on the board of trustees of The Architecture Foundation. From 1985 to 1990, he was deputy chairman of English Heritage. In July 2008, it was announced that he had been chosen as the new chairman of the National Trust; he took over the three-year post from William Proby in November of that year. He remained in the post until November 2014.

Personal life and honours

Jenkins married the American actress Gayle Hunnicutt in 1978; the couple had one son. They separated in 2008 and divorced in 2009. He married Hannah Kaye, events producer at Intelligence Squared, in 2014. Jenkins was appointed a Knight Bachelor for services to journalism in the 2004 New Year Honours. In 2022, Jenkins was elected as a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.

Selected works