Matthew Parris
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Matthew Parris (born August 7 1949 in Johannesburg) is a politician and journalist in the United Kingdom.
Parris grew up in South Africa and several other countries where his British father was working at the time. After obtaining a degree in philosophy from Clare College, Cambridge, and studying international relations at Yale University, he worked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, then in the Conservative Research Department, and then served as the Conservative Member of Parliament for West Derbyshire from 1979, leaving in 1986 to pursue a career in journalism. He has weekly columns in The Times newspaper and The Spectator magazine.
Parris announced he was gay in one of his weekly newspaper columns. In a live interview on Newsnight during the Ron Davies scandal of 1998, he famously told interviewer Jeremy Paxman that there were two gay members of the current Labour Cabinet, one allegedly being Peter Mandelson.
Parris is also a television presenter and pundit. As an MP he took part in a documentary requiring him to live for a week on the social security payments awarded by the Conservative goverment for which he was an MP. The experiment came to an embarrassing end when he ran out of money for the electricity meter. He left Parliament specifically to take over as host of ITV's Weekend World. He has also appeared on Have I Got News For You.
Bibliography
- Chance Witness: An Outsider's Life in Politics (Viking, 2002) ISBN 0670894400
- The King's English (Oxford Language Classics Series) Henry Fowler, Frank Fowler, Matthew Parris (introduction) (Oxford University Press, 2002) ISBN 0198605072
- Off Message: New Labour, New Sketches (Robson Books, 2001) ISBN 1861054793
- I Wish I Hadn't Said That: The Experts Speak - and Get It Wrong! Matthew Parris (foreword), Christopher Cerf, Victor Navasky (HarperCollins, 2000) ISBN 0006531490
- Against the Law: The Classic Account of a Homosexual in 1950s Britain Peter Wildeblood, Matthew Parris (introduction) (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999) ISBN 0297643827
- The Great Unfrocked: Two Thousand Years of Church Scandal (Robson, 1998) ISBN 1861051298
- Scorn with Extra Bile Matthew Parris (editor) (Penguin Books, 1998) ISBN 0140277803
- I Couldn't Possibly Comment: More Sketches from the Commons (Robson Books, 1997) ISBN 186105095X
- Read My Lips: A Treasury of Things Politicians Wish They Hadn't Said (Parkwest Publications, 1997) ISBN 1861050437
- Great Parliamentary Scandals: Four Centuries of Calumny, Smear and Innuendo (Robson Books, 1995) ISBN 0860519570
- Scorn with Added Vitriol (Hamish Hamilton, 1995) ISBN 0241135877
- Scorn: A Bucketful of Discourtesy, Disparagement, Invective, Ridicule, Impudence, Contumely, Derision, Hate, Affront, Disdain, Bile, Taunts, Curses and Jibes (Hamish Hamilton, 1994) ISBN 024113384X
- Look Behind You!: Sketches and Follies from the Commons (Robson, 1993) ISBN 0860518744
- So Far So Good...: Selected Pieces (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991) ISBN 0297812157
- Inca Kola: A Traveller's Tale of Peru (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990) ISBN 0297810758
- Coping with the Soviet Union Peter Blaker, Julian Critchley, Matthew Parris (Conservative Political Centre Bookshop, 1977) ISBN 0850705991
External links
- Times Online - Matthew Parris (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,1065,00.html) column archives
- Times Online - Matthew Parris: the Kerguelen columns (http://www.times-archive.co.uk/onlinespecials/features/parris/) articles from his trip to the Kerguelen Islands
- audio interview (http://www.notmuch.com/Features/Interview/int-040498.html)
- Matthew Parris (http://dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/News_and_Media/Journalists/Parris,_Matthew/) from the Open Directory Project