Саймон Дженкинс: Британ журналисі және публицисінің өмірбаяны

English journalist and author
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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.

Jenkins was born , in Birmingham, England. His father, Daniel Thomas Jenkins, was a Welsh professor of divinity at Princeton University 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. 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. He gave up both on becoming chairman of the National Trust in 2008, when he also resumed an occasional column for the Evening Standard.

In April 2009, The Guardian withdrew one of Jenkins' 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 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." In March 2024, Jenkins wrote critically of NATO's growing recklessness in the conflict in Ukraine as it "reached predictable stalemate", fearing the war would "run out of control". Jenkins argued that Western Europe had no interest in escalating the war by supplying longer range missiles, and its interests lay in seeking an early settlement and rebuilding Ukraine. He argued the "crass ineptitude of a quarter of a century of western military interventions" should have taught us lessons to be applied in this conflict. In May 2024, following the local elections, he wrote calling metro mayors a "farce of local democracy" advocating for their abolition.

Jenkins served on the boards of British Rail 1979–1990 and has also sat on the Board of Trustees of The Architecture Foundation. From 1985 to 1990, he was deputy chairman of English Heritage. He remained in the post until November 2014.

Jenkins married the American actress Gayle Hunnicutt in 1978; 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.