Edward Mortimer

Edward Mortimer (22 December 1943 – 18 June 2021) was a UN civil servant, journalist, author and academic. He was Distinguished Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, from 2013. He was the chair of the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice from 2010 to 2015 and one of the key people integral to the creation of the Campaign.

Mortimer was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 2010 New Year Honours.

Early life and education Edward Mortimer was born on 22 December 1943 in Burford, Oxfordshire, the son of Robert Mortimer, Regius Professor of Moral Theology at Christ Church, Oxford and later Bishop of Exeter and his wife Mary. Mortimer was a scholar at Eton College and studied history at Balliol College, Oxford, from 1962 to 1965, graduating with a congratulatory first, and was a Prize Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, from 1965 to 1972.

Career Before university Mortimer went to Senegal to do Voluntary Service Overseas, and taught English for a short period in a lycée in St Louis. After leaving Oxford he went to Paris to do research for a PhD, but set it aside in 1967 when he was hired as a reporter in The Times Paris office. He returned to Oxford in 1970 to write a book on the French Communist Party. During his time in Paris he documented the student riots and the last days of Charles de Gaulle's presidency. Left-leaning in his politics, he later reflected that "For me, May 1968 was certainly the high point of the Sixties." He went on to become a columnist and leader writer for The Times and foreign affairs editor for the Financial Times.

Selected bibliography France and the Africans, 1944-60: A Political History Faber & Faber, 1969. Faith and Power, the politics of Islam Random House, New York, 1982. Roosevelt's Children: Tomorrow's World Leaders and Their World Hamish Hamilton Ltd, 1987. The World That FDR Built: Vision and Reality Scribner, 1989.