Simon Kuper

British author
the South African Supreme Court judge

Simon Kuper is a British, and naturalized French, author and journalist, best known for his work at the Financial Times and as a football writer. After studies at Oxford, Harvard University and the Technische Universität Berlin, Kuper started his career in journalism at the FT in 1994, where he today writes about a wide range of topics, such as politics, society, culture, sports and urban planning. and has twice been awarded the British Society of Magazine Editors' prize for Columnist of the Year. Time Magazine has called him “one of the world’s leading writers on soccer” and The Economic Times labeled him “one of the world's most famous football writers.”

He is the author of several books, among them the William Hill awarded Football Against the Enemy and the Sunday Times Bestseller about UK politics, Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK. Born in Uganda to South African parents, Kuper spent most of his childhood in the Netherlands and lives in Paris.

Kuper was born in Uganda of South African born parents, and moved to Leiden in the Netherlands as a child, where his father, Adam Kuper, was a professor in anthropology at Leiden University. He is named for his paternal grandfather, Simon Meyer Kuper, who was a South African Supreme Court judge assassinated in 1963. He has lived in Jamaica, Sweden, Palo Alto, California, Berlin and London. He studied History and German at Oxford University, and attended Harvard University as a Kennedy Scholar.

Kuper joined the Financial Times in 1994. He wrote the daily currencies column and worked in other departments, before leaving the FT in 1998. He returned in 2002 as a sports columnist and has worked there ever since. Nowadays he writes a general column for the Weekend FT on all manner of topics from politics to books, and on cities including London, Paris, Johannesburg and Miami. Kuper has also written for The Times and The Observer, ESPN, and The Spectator. Kuper also writes in Dutch, and his work frequently appeared in publications including the Dutch newspapers NRC Handelsblad and Het Financieele Dagblad, the literary football magazine Hard Gras, and the online newspaper De Correspondent.

Kuper is considered one of the most influential voices at the Financial Times. Since joining the publication in 1994, he has held various roles, writing on a wide range of topics, from sports and popular culture to politics. He started his FT career as a reporter. His assignments have often taken him beyond his base in Paris, providing coverage and analysis on global events from different parts of the world. His sportswriting is appreciated for its exploration of sports beyond mere scores and statistics, looking at the societal, political and cultural impact of sports globally. Kuper discusses the culture that surrounds football — such as the Old Firm rivalry — as well as the on field play. He has written on cricket occasionally, with articles on cricket in the Netherlands and cricket in apartheid South Africa. He has also contributed for many years to the FT's Weekend Magazine, as a Life & Arts columnist, often with long form essays and interviews spanning themes such as current affairs, travel, history and politics. Kuper has twice been awarded the British Society of Magazine Editors' prize for Columnist of the Year, in 2016 and 2020.

Kuper lives in Paris with his wife, the American author Pamela Druckerman, and their three children. In 2022, he wrote in the Financial Times that he had recently become a naturalized French citizen after living in Paris for more than 20 years.