Peter Jenkins

Peter George James Jenkins (11 May 1934 – 27 May 1992) was a British journalist and Associate Editor of The Independent. During his career he wrote regular columns for The Guardian, The Sunday Times as well as The Independent.

Early life and education Peter Jenkins was born at 5, Penn Road, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, son of pharmaceutical chemist Kenneth Edmund Jenkins (1906-1993) and teacher Joan Evelyn (1907-1981), née Croger, and grew up at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, where his father had a successful chemist's shop. He was educated at Culford School and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he took a BA in history. He later attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison on a Harkness Fellowship, where he was a socialist activist. He performed his National Service in the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean fleet.

Peter Jenkins was a visiting Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. His awards included 'Granada TV Journalist of the Year' for 1978.

Personal life Jenkins was married twice: his first wife, Charlotte Strachey, died from leukemia. He later married Polly Toynbee in 1970, and they remained married until his death. Amy Jenkins, author of the 1990s TV serial This Life, is his daughter.

Later life Jenkins, a longtime smoker who stopped in the final years of his life, died from respiratory failure, caused by idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, at University College Hospital in London on 27 May 1992, aged 58. and David Owen said he was "an exceptional journalist with a deep understanding of the Labour movement".

Works

Moreover, some of his work has been collected in an edited book: