John Kampfner

Journalist

John Kampfner is Chief Executive of Index on Censorship, one of the world's leading organisations that monitors abuses of freedom of expression. He was Editor of the New Statesman from 2005-2008 and won the British Society of Magazine Editors Current Affairs Editor of the Year in 2006. Kampfner is also Chair of the board of Turner Contemporary, the most important visual arts project in the south east of England.

He began his career as a foreign correspondent with the Daily Telegraph, first in East Berlin where he reported on the fall of the Wall and the unification of Germany, and then in Moscow at the time of the coup and the collapse of Soviet Communism. On returning to the UK in the mid-1990s, he became Chief Political Correspondent at the FT and political commentator for the BBC's Today programme. Between 2002 and 2005, Kampfner was Political Editor of the New Statesman.

Kampfner has presented several documentaries for BBC television and radio and is a regular pundit for all channels on politics and foreign affairs. In 2002 he won the Foreign Press Association award for Film of the Year and Journalist of the Year for his two-parter 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.

Kampfner's books include the critically acclaimed and best selling 'Blair's Wars' (2004), an account of the former prime minister's militaristic hubris, and Freedom for Sale (2009).