Simon Heffer

Simon James Heffer (born 18 July 1960) is an English historian, journalist, author and political commentator. He has published several biographies and a series of books on the social history of Great Britain from the mid-nineteenth century until the end of the First World War. He was appointed professorial research fellow at the University of Buckingham in 2017. He worked as a columnist for the Daily Mail and since 2015 has had a weekly column in The Sunday Telegraph. As a political commentator, Heffer takes a socially conservative position. Heffer was born in Chelmsford, Essex, and was educated there at King Edward VI Grammar School before going to read English at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (MA); after he had become a successful journalist, his old university later awarded him a PhD in History for a book on Enoch Powell. Heffer worked for The Daily Telegraph until 1995. He worked as a columnist for the Daily Mail from 1995 to 2005. He rejoined the Telegraph in October 2005 as a columnist and associate editor. Martin Newland, the Daily Telegraph editor at the time, described the newspaper as Heffer's "natural journalistic home". He left the Telegraph in May 2011 to "pursue a role in journalism and broadcasting" and "complete a major literary project". It had been speculated that his departure had been prompted by his constant attacks on David Cameron's government, of which the Telegraph had been generally supportive. Heffer later rejoined the Daily Mail to edit a new online comment section, called RightMinds, of the paper's online edition. He returned to the Daily Telegraph in June 2015 and has a weekly column in the Sunday Telegraph. Heffer has written biographies of the historian and essayist Thomas Carlyle, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams and of the British politician Enoch Powell (Like the Roman), which was described by the New Statesman as "a lucid and majestic tribute" to the politician. He received his PhD in modern history from Cambridge University for the 1998 Powell biography.