Phillip George Knightley

Phillip George Knightley (23 January 1929 – 7 December 2016) was an Australian journalist, critic, and non-fiction author. He became a visiting Professor of Journalism at the University of Lincoln, England, and was a media commentator on the intelligence services and propaganda.

Biography

Born in Sydney, he began his career in 1946 as a copyboy with the Sydney Daily Telegraph. Two years as a cadet reporter with The Northern Star (Lismore) followed. He then temporarily left journalism to become a copra trader in Fiji. He next joined the Oceania Daily News (Suva), for which he wrote a social column titled Round the Town With Suzanne. Knightley was also at The Sunday Times during the Hitler Diaries scandal.

After leaving The Sunday Times, he contributed literary criticism to the Mail on Sunday (London), The Independent (London), The Australians Review of Books, The Age (Melbourne), and the New York Review of Books.

He lectured on journalism, law, and war at the Australian National Press Club in Canberra, the Australian Senate, City University, London, University of Manchester, Pennsylvania State University, University of California Los Angeles, Stanford University, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the Inner Temple, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and to the University of Düsseldorf.

Knightley's main professional interests were war reporting, propaganda, and espionage. In more than 30 years of writing about espionage, he met most of the spy chiefs of all the major intelligence services in the world, and interviewed numerous officers and agents from all sides during the Cold War and since. In December 2010, he received media coverage for acting as a bail sureties provider for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Having backed Assange by pledging bail in December 2010, Knightley lost the money in June 2012 when a judge ordered it to be forfeited, as Assange had sought to escape the jurisdiction of the English courts by entering the embassy of Ecuador.

In 1997, Knightley was a judge for Canada's Lionel Gelber Prize, which honours the world's best book on international relations. He was the European representative on the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and patron of the C. W. Bean Foundation in Canberra. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the Queen's Birthday Honours in June 2005, for "services to journalism and as an author".

Knightley was married with two daughters, Aliya and Marisa, a son, Kim, and two granddaughters. He lived between London, Sydney and Goa in India. He died on 7 December 2016 at the age of 87.

Awards and honours 1975 – Overseas Press Club of America, Best Book on Foreign Affairs 1975 for The First Casualty as the best book on foreign affairs. 1980 – British Press Awards Journalist of the Year 1980 – Granada Television 'What the papers say Reporter of the year' 1982 – British Colour Magazine Writer of the Year 1983 – British Chef and Brewer Crime Writer's award – for his investigation into a murder case in Italy 1988 – British Press Awards Journalist of the Year – one of only two journalists to have won the honour twice 2006 – City University, London, Artes Doctor Honoris Causa (Honorary Doctor of Arts) for Services to Journalism and Authorship 2007 – University of Lincoln, Lincoln, Visiting Professor of Journalism at the University of Lincoln 2007 – University of Sydney, Australia, Doctor Honoris Causa (Honorary Doctor of Letters) for Services to Journalism and Authorship.

Publications The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth Maker from the Crimea to Vietnam, London, Andre Deutsch, 1975 – on war and propaganda (in the United States, a Book of the Month Club main choice), 465 pages. The First Casualty: The War Correspondent As Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Kosovo. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. 592 pages. The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Iraq. 3rd edition: 2004, 608 pages. The Second Oldest Profession, 1986, on espionage (in the United States, a History Club alternative choice) Philby, KGB Master Spy, his biography of Kim Philby An Affair of State, about the 1963 John Profumo scandal in Britain, publication of which was banned in the United Kingdom The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia (with Colin Simpson) Philby – The Spy Who Betrayed a Generation. (with Bruce Page, David Leitch) 1968 Andre Deutsch Limited The Pearl of Days: An Intimate Memoir of the Sunday Times 1822-1972, (with Harold Hobson & Leonard Russell) London, Hamilton, 1972, , the history of the Sunday Times Suffer the Children, about the Thalidomide tragedy The Death of Venice, , on attempts to save Venice from permanent flooding The Rise and Fall of the House of Vestey, on the business empire established by Sir William (later Baron) Vestey in 1897; A Hack's Progress, London : J. Cape, 1997, , his autobiography Australia: A Biography of a Nation, London : Jonathan Cape, 2000. Knightley, Phillip, Sarah Jackson, and Annabel Merullo; John Keegan (Introduction). The Eye of War: Words and Photographs from the Front Line. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2003.