RDN bio
[More on RDN and his background is available here in the archive site.]
Richard D North, 65, is a writer, broadcaster and commentator. He is media fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs, the free market think tank, and fellow of the Social Affairs Unit, the home of conservative cultural thought.
He edits The Right Sites family of challenging and creative websites.
RDN contributes to the SAU’s online review on the arts, culture and politics.
RDN’s recent books include Mr Cameron’s Makeover Politics: Why old Tory stories matter to us all (SAU, 2009); “Scrap the BBC!”: Ten years to set broadcasting free (SAU, 2007); Mr Blair’s Messiah Politics: Ten years of inspirational government, 1997-2007 (SAU, 2007); Rich Is Beautiful: A very personal defence of Mass Affluence (SAU, 2005) and pamphlets on liberty, risk, the House of Lords, stag hunting and more.
Wikipedia (as of January 2011) writes that RDN ”was a contributor to Vole magazine, but this like much of his early career is missing from his biography”. To put that right: my “Scrap the BBC!” has quite a long section on my journalism in the 1970s: it included freelancing for The Tablet, The Listener, The Observer, Radio Times, The Guardian, and one or two other papers, none of it with much prominence. (I can’t remember how Richard Boston came across me, or why he gave me a column in Vole, for which I was and am very grateful. I edited his remarkable paper for a few editions when Richard gave it up, but wasn’t a great success.)
In the late 80′s RDN was the Independent‘s (and then the Sunday Times‘) environment and Third World development columnist, whose upbeat, rather anti-green book Life On a Modern Planet: A manifesto for progress (Manchester University Press, 1995) marked 25 years’ obsession with the topics.
RDN has written books on Christian monasticism (Fools For God, Collins, 1987 ), and British conservation (Wild Britain, Century, 1983), our duties to animals (The Animals Report, Penguin, 1983), the ecological and social impact ot Western lifestyles (The Real Cost, Chatto & Windus, 1986) and schooling, farming and Patrick Lichfield’s glamour photography.
He quite often appears on Today, Newsnight, the Jeremy Vine Show, Channel 4 News, Sky TV, and the Moral Maze as a defender of capitalism, globalisation, representative Democracy and any other topic where the soft left liberal green orthodoxy needs bashing.
He is an experienced (and if required exuberant and even abrasive) public speaker.
