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Paul Bede Johnson (born 2 November 1928) is an English journalist, historian, speechwriter and author. He was educated at the Jesuit independent school Stonyhurst College, and at Magdalen College, Oxford. Johnson first came to prominence in the 1950s as a journalist writing for, and later editing, the ''New Statesman'' magazine. A prolific writer, he has written over 40 books and contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers. While associated with the left in his early career, he is now a conservative popular historian. His sons include the journalist Daniel Johnson, founder of ''Standpoint'', and the businessman Luke Johnson, former chairman of Channel 4. ==Early life and career== Johnson was born in Manchester, England. His father, William Aloysius Johnson, was an artist and Principal of the Art School in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. At Stonyhurst, Johnson received an education grounded in the Jesuit method,〔As he saw it in his 1957 "Conviction" essay.〕 which he preferred over the more secularized curriculum of Oxford. One of his tutors at Oxford was the historian A. J. P. Taylor.〔.〕 After graduating with a second-class honours degree, Johnson performed his national service in the Army, joining the King's Royal Rifle Corps and then the Royal Army Educational Corps, where he was commissioned as a Captain (acting) based mainly in Gibraltar.〔 Here he saw the "grim misery and cruelty of the Franco regime".〔''Conviction'', p 206〕 Johnson's military record helped the Paris periodical ''Realités'' hire him,〔 where he was assistant editor from 1952 to 1955. Johnson adopted a left-wing political outlook during this period as he witnessed, in May 1952, the police response to a riot in Paris, the "ferocity (which ) I would not have believed had I not seen it with my own eyes." Subsequently, he also served as the ''New Statesman''s Paris correspondent. For a time he was a convinced Bevanite and an associate of Aneurin Bevan himself. Moving back to London in 1955, Johnson joined the ''Statesman''s staff. Some of Johnson's writing already showed signs of iconoclasm. His first book, about the Suez War, appeared in 1957. An anonymous commentator in ''The Spectator'' wrote that "one of his () remarks about Mr. Gaitskell is quite as damaging as anything he has to say about Sir Anthony Eden", but the Labour Party's opposition to the Suez intervention led Johnson to assert "the old militant spirit of the party was back".〔("A Spectator' Notebook" ), ''The Spectator'', 25 January 1957, p.7〕 The following year, he attacked Ian Fleming's James Bond novel ''Dr No''〔, in .〕 and in 1964 he warned of "The Menace of Beatlism"〔, reprinted as ("From the archive: The Menace of Beatlism" ), ''New Statesman'', 28 August 2014〕 in an article contemporarily described as being "rather exaggerated" by Henry Fairlie in ''The Spectator''.〔Henry Fairlie ("Beatles and Babies" ), ''The Spectator'', 6 March 1964, p.4〕 He was successively lead writer, deputy editor and editor of the ''New Statesman'' magazine from 1965 to 1970. He was found suspect for his attendances at the soirées of Lady Antonia Fraser, then married to a Conservative MP. There was some resistance to his appointment as ''New Statesman'' editor, not least from the writer Leonard Woolf, who objected to a Catholic filling the position, and Johnson was placed on six months' probation. ''Statesmen And Nations'' (1971), the anthology of his ''Statesman'' articles, contains numerous reviews of biographies of Conservative politicians and an openness to continental Europe; in one article Johnson took a positive view of events of May 1968 in Paris, an article which at the time of first publication led Colin Welch in ''The Spectator'' to accuse Johnson of possessing "a taste for violence".〔Colin Welch ("AfterThought: Imbecile Power" ), ''The Spectator'', 30 May 1968, p.31〕 According to this book, Johnson filed 54 overseas reports during his ''Statesman'' years. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Paul Johnson (writer)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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