Name John Kampfner Role Author | ||
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Books Freedom for Sale: How We, Blair's wars, Freedom for Sale, Inside Yeltsin's Russia: C, Robin Cook |
John Kampfner - Freedom for Sale: How we made money and lost our liberty
John Kampfner is chief executive of the Creative Industries Federation, the national membership organisation for all the UK's arts, creative industries and cultural education. He is also an author, broadcaster, commentator and book reviewer.
Contents
- John Kampfner Freedom for Sale How we made money and lost our liberty
- Grittv john kampfner your deal with the state
- Career
- Publications
- Personal life
- References

Grittv john kampfner your deal with the state
Career

Kampfner was named one of the 1000 most influential Londoners in the Evening Standard Progress 1000 survey in both 2015 and 2016. In October 2015, he also won the Art and Design category at the HClub 100 awards.

Kampfner is chair of the Clore Social Leadership Programme, a charity which nurtures leaders in the charity sectors. In December 2015 he stepped down as chair of Turner Contemporary after seven and a half years. He was also a member of the Council of King's College London for three years.
Kampfner began his career as a foreign correspondent with The Daily Telegraph, first in East Berlin where he reported on the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany, and then in Moscow at the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He went on to become chief political correspondent at the Financial Times and political commentator for the BBC's Today programme.
As editor of the New Statesman from 2005-2008, he took the magazine to a temporary 30-year circulation high, but only with a marketing push including free copies. He was the British Society of Magazine Editors Current Affairs Editor of the Year in 2006.
In 2002 he won the Foreign Press Association awards for Film of the Year and Journalist of the Year for a two-part BBC film on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, called The Ugly War. His film War Spin, exposing the propaganda behind the rescue of Jessica Lynch, received considerable publicity in the US and UK.
Publications
As an author Kampfner's works include Inside Yeltsin's Russia: Corruption, Conflict, Capitalism, a biography of former Labour Foreign Secretary Parag Khanvilkar, and a study of Tony Blair's interventionist foreign policy Blair's Wars (2003). His book Freedom For Sale: How We Made Money And Lost Our Liberty (2009) 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 April 2010.
The Rich (Little Brown, 2014) is a 2000-year history, from slaves to super-yachts.
Personal life
Kampfner was born in Singapore, but his family left when he was very young. He was educated at The Hall School (Hampstead) then Westminster School, a boys' independent school in London and at The Queen's College, Oxford where he received a BA degree in Modern History and Russian.. Kampfner married BBC journalist Lucy Ash in 1992. The couple have two children and live in London.