John Bew | |
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Born | |
Nationality | British |
Alma mater | Pembroke College, Cambridge (BA, MPhil, PhD) |
Employer | King's College London |
Parents |
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John Bew is Professor in History and Foreign Policy at King's College London [1] and from 2013 to 2014 held the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the John W. Kluge Center. [2]
In 2019, Bew joined the Number 10 Policy Unit under Prime Minister Boris Johnson, [3] continuing to serve as foreign policy advisor under successive Prime Ministers Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. In 2023, the New Statesman described Bew as "the great survivor of Downing Street", and one of the most powerful figures in right-wing British politics. [4]
Bew is the son of Paul Bew, Professor of Irish Politics at Queen's University Belfast and his wife Greta Jones, a history professor at the University of Ulster. [5]
Bew completed his education at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he was a Foundation Scholar and a Thornton Scholar and attained a first class BA in History. He won the Member's Prize for the best MPhil in Historical Studies, before completing his doctoral dissertation "Politics, identity and the shaping of Unionism in the north of Ireland, from the French Revolution to the Home Rule Crisis" in 2006. From 2007 to 2010, Bew was Lecturer in Modern British History, Harris Fellow and Director of Studies at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he was previously a Junior Research Fellow.
Bew is a contributing writer for the New Statesman and the author of several books, including Realpolitik: A History (2015) and Castlereagh: Enlightenment, War and Tyranny, published by Quercus in the UK in 2011 and by Oxford University Press in the United States the following year. [6]
Bew's original work on Castlereagh formed the basis for a 2013 BBC Northern Ireland documentary that he presented. [7]
Citizen Clem , [8] published in 2016, was named a "book of the year" in The Times , The Sunday Times , Evening Standard , The Spectator and New Statesman and received excellent reviews in The Guardian , The Observer , Literary Review and London Review of Books . [9] It was also awarded the 2017 Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography and the 2017 Orwell Prize. Phillip Collins, for The Times, described it as "The best book in the field of British politics". [10]
In 2015, Bew was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize for Politics and International Relations. He also heads London think-tank Policy Exchange’s Britain in the World Project, launched by the UK Secretary of State for Defence in March 2016, and coordinates its work on foreign policy. His most recent book is Realpolitik: A History published in 2016 by Oxford University Press. [11] [12] [13]
Bew is an avid fan of Manchester United FC and used to play non-league football for Milton Rovers FC.
British prime minister Boris Johnson selected Bew to lead an "integrated review of security, defence, development and foreign policy, [14] which advocated a "tilt" towards focus on the indo-pacific. [15]
Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, was a British statesman and Labour Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955. He was Deputy Prime Minister during the wartime coalition government under Winston Churchill, and served twice as Leader of the Opposition from 1935 to 1940 and from 1951 to 1955. Attlee remains the longest serving Labour leader and is widely considered by historians and members of the public through various polls to be one of the greatest Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom.
Realpolitik is the approach of conducting diplomatic or political policies based primarily on considerations of given circumstances and factors, rather than strictly following ideological, moral, or ethical premises. In this respect, it shares aspects of its philosophical approach with those of realism and pragmatism. It is often simply referred to as pragmatism in politics, e.g. "pursuing pragmatic policies" or "realistic policies".
The Treaty of Ghent was the peace treaty that ended the War of 1812 between the United States and the United Kingdom. It took effect in February 1815. Both sides signed it on December 24, 1814, in the city of Ghent, United Netherlands. The treaty restored relations between the two parties to status quo ante bellum by restoring the pre-war borders of June 1812. Both sides were eager to end the war. It ended when the treaty arrived in Washington and was immediately ratified unanimously by the United States Senate and exchanged with British officials the next day.
Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry,, usually known as Lord Castlereagh, derived from the courtesy title Viscount Castlereagh by which he was styled from 1796 to 1821, was an Anglo-Irish statesman and politician. As secretary to the Viceroy of Ireland, he worked to suppress the Rebellion of 1798 and to secure passage in 1800 of the Irish Act of Union. As the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom from 1812, he was central to the management of the coalition that defeated Napoleon, and was British plenipotentiary at the Congress of Vienna. In the post-war government of Lord Liverpool, Castlereagh was seen to support harsh measures against agitation for reform. He killed himself while in office in 1822.
John Lewis Gaddis is an American military historian, political scientist, and writer. He is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University. He is best known for his work on the Cold War and grand strategy, and he has been hailed as the "Dean of Cold War Historians" by The New York Times. Gaddis is also the official biographer of the seminal 20th-century American statesman George F. Kennan. George F. Kennan: An American Life (2011), his biography of Kennan, won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
The New Statesman is a British political and cultural newsmagazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members of the socialist Fabian Society, such as George Bernard Shaw, who was a founding director.
Ernest Bevin was a British statesman, trade union leader and Labour Party politician. He cofounded and served as General Secretary of the powerful Transport and General Workers' Union from 1922 to 1940 and served as Minister of Labour and National Service in the wartime coalition government. He succeeded in maximising the British labour supply for both the armed services and domestic industrial production with a minimum of strikes and disruption.
Robert Kagan is an American neoconservative scholar. He is a critic of U.S. foreign policy and a leading advocate of liberal interventionism.
Paul Anthony Elliott Bew, Baron Bew, is a British historian from Northern Ireland and a life peer. He has worked at Queen's University Belfast since 1979, and is currently Professor of Irish Politics, a position he has held since 1991.
Leszek Kołakowski was a Polish philosopher and historian of ideas. He is best known for his critical analyses of Marxist thought, such as in his three-volume history of Marxist philosophy Main Currents of Marxism (1976). In his later work, Kołakowski increasingly focused on religious questions. In his 1986 Jefferson Lecture, he asserted that "we learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are".
Romila Thapar is an Indian historian. Her principal area of study is ancient India, a field in which she is pre-eminent. Thapar is a Professor of Ancient History, Emerita, at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
Sir Charles Kingsley Webster was a British diplomat and historian. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Crosby and King's College, Cambridge. After leaving Cambridge University, he went on to become a professor at Harvard, Oxford, and the London School of Economics (LSE). He also served as President of the British Academy from 1950 to 1954.
The Royal School, Armagh is a co-educational voluntary grammar school, founded in the 17th century, in the city of Armagh in Northern Ireland. It has a boarding department with an international intake. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference.
Robert Jacob Alexander, Baron Skidelsky, is a British economic historian. He is the author of a three-volume award-winning biography of British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946). Skidelsky read history at Jesus College, Oxford, and is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick, England.
Jeremy Black is a British historian, writer, and former professor of history at the University of Exeter. He is a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US.
Anatol Lieven is a British author, journalist, and policy analyst best known for his expertise on the Taliban of Afghanistan. He is currently a visiting professor at King's College London and senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is also a contributor to the Valdai Discussion Club.
Amelia Anne Stewart, Marchioness of Londonderry, nicknamed "Emily" and, from 1794 until 1821 generally known as Lady Castlereagh, was the wife of the Georgian-era Anglo-Irish statesman Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, who from 1812 to 1822 was British Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons. Well-connected by birth to the aristocracy and wife of a prominent politician who was Britain's leading diplomat during the close of the Napoleonic Wars, Lady Castlereagh was an influential member of Regency London's high society.
Sir Lawrence David Freedman, is a British academic, historian and author specialising in foreign policy, international relations and strategy. He has been described as the "dean of British strategic studies" and was a member of the Iraq Inquiry. He is an Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London.
Helen Zerlina Margetts, is Professor of Internet and Society at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), University of Oxford and from 2011 to 2018 was Director of the OII. She is currently Director of the Public Policy Programme at The Alan Turing Institute. She is a political scientist specialising in digital era governance and politics, and has published over a hundred books, journal articles and research reports in this field.
Citizen Clem is a 2016 biography of Clement Attlee by John Bew.