<< BackMatthew Parris
Matthew Francis Parris (Clare 1969), born 7 August 1949, is a journalist, political commentator and broadcaster.
After a Mellon Fellowship at Yale University and two years at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, he moved into politics, joining the Conservative Research Department and becoming correspondence secretary to Margaret Thatcher.
He entered parliament at the 1979 general election and served as the Conservative MP for West Derbyshire. He left the House of Commons in 1986 to pursue a career in journalism, initially taking over as presenter of the long-running ITV programme
Weekend World and then joining
The Times as a parliamentary sketchwriter, a role he held until 2001.
He has garnered many awards for his journalism, including the Edgar Wallace Outstanding Reporter of the Year Award 1990, Columnist of the Year at the British Press Awards on no less than three occasions (1991, 1993 and 1996), What the Papers Say Columnist of the Year 1992 and the Orwell Prize for Journalism 2005. He is a presenter for BBC Radio 4 and a regular contributor to
The Times and the
Spectator.
His books include
So Far So Good (1992),
Look Behind You (1993),
Scorn (1994),
Great Parliamentary Scandals (1995),
Read My Lips (1996),
Chance Witness: An Outsider’s Life in Politics (2002) and
A Castle in Spain (2005).
He was elected to an Honorary Fellowship of Clare College in 2006.