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Martin Westlake (born 1957) is a British and Belgian author (historical, science fiction and short stories in various genres), playwright, biographer, academic and a former high-ranking EU civil servant. He is married to Belgian artist Godelieve Vandamme.
Westlake's forthcoming full-length historical novel, Other Than an Aspen Be, set in the 1914-1918 period, portrays the scourge of war and the plight of refugees and the existential dilemmas these cause. Westlake is represented by Bill Goodall
Westlake has had more than twenty short stories published in various genres. His SF short stories have been published notably in Aphelion and Metaphorosis. His 2021 story, "Going Home", was selected for inclusion in the recently-published The Best of British Science Fiction 2021
A young adult SF novel, The Hunt, was published in 2016 under the pseudonym, Paul Bird. In an interview about the book, which features a young gamer in a futuristic world, Westlake/Bird cites various inspirations including art, literature, and the Bible.
Westlake's plays been performed in Brussels and elsewhere. His farce, The Impotence of Being Frank, was first performed at the Warehouse Theatre (Brussels) by the English Comedy Club (ECC) in May 2017. The comedy was reprised by the ECC at the Warehouse Theatre in May 2019, and taken to the Festival of European Anglophone Theatre Societies (FEATS) in Ottobrun (Munich), where it was performed at the Entity Theatre in June 2019. His Sons and Mothers, six monologues about "three mothers who have lost their sons and three sons who have lost their mothers", was performed by the Little Seal Company at the Warehouse Theatre in October 2019. Westlake was also an original cast member.
Westlake has partnered Brussels-based composer Nigel Clarke (https://nigel-clarke.com/ ) in music/verse compositions. These have included 'Heritage Suite'/'What Hope Saw' (2009); 'Earthrise' (2010); 'Storm Surge' (2013); 'The City in the Sea]' (2013); 'Where a Scarlet Flower Will Blossom (2014); and 'Mysteries of the Horizon]' (2015).
In 2001 Westlake published a full-length biography of British Labour politician, Neil Kinnock to critical acclaim: 'A biography as frank as this one reveals him as a man of equal courage and integrity.' - Mail on Sunday; 'Kinnock was a brave politician – and a thoroughly decent one. He is owed this biography.' - Financial Times; 'Westlake reminds us of Kinnock's pivotal historical importance.' - The Independent; 'This book is one of the most sublimely constructed and factually complete literary gems of the year.' - The Independent on Sunday.
Westlake has since contributed chapters about various aspects of Kinnock's career to a number of edited publications. In 2017 he collaborated with the London Almeida Theatre's Figures of Speech series with an essay about Neil Kinnock's 1987 "A Thousand Generations" speech; A Thousand Generations — Figures of Speech (almeida.co.uk). He has contributed biographical essays to The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, notably about former European Parliament Secretary-General, Sir Julian Priestley.
Since 2013 Westlake has been a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges, where he also sits on the Academic Council (https://www.coleurope.eu/whoswho/person/martin.westlake ). He runs a research seminar on the constitutional, institutional and political reform of the European Union and its institutions. Between 2000 and 2005 he taught a course at the College about the European Parliament. His former students include Roberta Metsola (née Tedesco), President of the European Parliament (2022 - ). Westlake is also a Visiting Professor at the European Institute of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) (https://www.lse.ac.uk/european- institute/people/westlake-martin ), where he co-organises and co-chairs, with Anthony Teasdale, a weekly seminar on 'The EU in Practice; Politics and Power in the British System'; https://www.lse.ac.uk/european-institute/the-european-union-in-practice
Westlake has published widely on the European institutions and British politics. His main books as author or editor include:
Westlake has also published a large number of refereed articles, research and occasional papers, chapters in edited volumes, blog pieces and book reviews.
In 2018, writing under the pseudonym Johannes de Berlaymont, Westlake published Working for the EU: How to get in (2018) (https://www.johnharperpublishing.co.uk/working-for-the-eu-how-to-get- in/ ), and has since run an eight-hour career workshop based on the book each autumn at the College of Europe.
Westlake's occasional journalism has been published inter alia in the Times, the Guardian, the Financial Times, the European Voice, the Bulletin and Travel Tomorrow (https://traveltomorrow.com/author/mwestlake/ ).
Starting in 1985, Westlake had a lengthy career in European organisations and the EU institutions, rising to become Secretary-General of the European Economic and Social Committee, 2008-2013 before taking early retirement. He began his career in the Council of Europe, working for the Parliamentary Assembly. Joining the European Union, he worked for the Council of the European Union, the European Commission (Secretariat General, DG X, DG Education and Culture) and the European Economic and Social Committee, where he worked first as Head of Communications and then as Director of Consultative Works before becoming Secretary-General. During his time in DG Education and Culture he played a key role in developing the Erasmus Mundus programme (now absorbed into Erasmus Plus [1] ), the EU's answer to the U.S. Fulbright Programme.
The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union, it adopts European legislation, following a proposal by the European Commission. The Parliament is composed of 705 members (MEPs). It represents the second-largest democratic electorate in the world, with an electorate of 375 million eligible voters in 2009.
Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock,, is a Welsh former politician who served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992. He served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1970 to 1995, first for Bedwellty and then for Islwyn. He was Vice-President of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004. Kinnock was considered to be on the soft left of the Labour Party.
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Paul van Buitenen is a retired Dutch politician of the Europe Transparent Party who served as a Member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2009.
Glenys Elizabeth Kinnock, Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead,, is a British politician and former teacher who served as Minister of State for Europe from June to October 2009 and Minister of State for Africa and the United Nations from 2009 to 2010. A member of the Labour Party, she was previously a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Wales, formerly South Wales East, from 1994 to 2009.
The Erasmus Programme is a European Union (EU) student exchange programme established in 1987. Erasmus+, or Erasmus Plus, is the new programme combining all the EU's current schemes for education, training, youth and sport, which was started in January 2014.
Alan Sked is a British Eurosceptic academic notable for having founded the Anti-Federalist League and its successor the UK Independence Party (UKIP). He is Professor Emeritus of International History at the London School of Economics and has stood as a candidate in several parliamentary elections.
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Stephen Nathan Kinnock is a British politician serving as Member of Parliament (MP) for Aberavon since 2015. A member of the Labour Party, he has been Shadow Minister for Immigration since 2022.
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Simon Hix is a British political scientist, holder of the Stein Rokkan chair in comparative politics at the European University Institute in Florence. He was also Harold Laski Professor of Political Science and pro-director for research at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Hix is an expert in European Union politics, and the author of several books, including What's Wrong with the European Union and How to Fix It, Democratic Politics in the European Parliament with Abdul Noury and Gérard Roland, and The Political System of the European Union. He is also associate editor of the international peer-reviewed European Union Politics, and founder and chairman of VoteWatch Europe, an influential online EU affairs think-tank founded in London in 2009 that combines big data with political insight. After a first degree and a master's from the London School of Economics and Political Science, Simon Hix obtained a PhD in Political and Social Science at the European University Institute in Florence in 1995, and lectured in European Politics at Brunel University 1996–97, before joining the LSE in 1997. In this university he was promoted to professor in 2004, and served also as head of its department of government (2012–2015), academic director of its school of public policy (2017–2019), and pro-director for research from 2019. He finally was appointed Stein Rokkan chair of comparative politics at the European University Institute in Florence in 2021. His main areas of research are voting in parliaments, democratic institutions, and EU politics.
Wilhelmus Adrianus Gerardus Blonk is a Dutch economist. He is currently a member of the board of the Close the Gap Foundation and has published 3 books, 20 studies, ca. 40 articles and more than 500 public speeches.
Michiel Frans van Hulten is Director of Transparency International EU and a former Dutch politician. He was a Member of the European Parliament (1999–2004) and was chairman of the Labour Party from December 2005 until April 2007.
Anthony Teasdale, FAcSS, was Director General of the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS) - formally known as the Directorate-General for Parliamentary Research Services - in the permanent administration of the European Parliament, from 2013 to 2022. The EPRS serves members and committees as the in-house research centre and think tank of the Parliament. He retired from the Parliament's administration in June 2022.
The Federal Trust for Education and Research is a research institute studying the interactions between regional, national, European and global levels of government. Founded in 1945 on the initiative of Sir William Beveridge, it has long made a powerful contribution to the study of federalism and federal systems. It has always had a particular interest in the European Union and Britain’s place in it.
Sara Hagemann is a Danish academic and an expert on international and European politics. She has published extensively on issues related to political processes and representation in the European Union, transparency in politics, and the role of national parliaments in international affairs. Sara is currently Professor of Political Science and Vice Dean at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Copenhagen University, where she joined in September 2021. Before then she was associate professor at the London School of Economics and Associate Dean at the LSE School of Public Policy and a faculty member of the LSE European Institute. Sara has also held positions as head of programme and policy analyst at the European Policy Centre's Political Europe Programme and the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, senior fellow at the UK in a Changing Europe, and worked in the Danish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
Giacomo Benedetto FRSA is a British Italian political scientist and holder of a Jean Monnet Chair at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is an expert in European Union politics, and has researched and published extensively on the European Parliament, Euroscepticism, and the EU budget. Benedetto is also associate editor of the peer-reviewed European Journal of Government and Economics, and co-ordinator of the EUROSCI Network Centre in the UK.
Nouvelle Europe is a Paris-based organization founded in 2003 by Philippe Perchoc, a researcher at the European Parliament and lecturer at College of Europe and Université catholique de Louvain, and by Thomas Kurkdjian, a French civil servant.
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