Profile of Francis Beckett

Francis Beckett is an author, journalist, broadcaster, playwright and contemporary historian.

His seventeen books include biographies of four Proime Ministers, as well as of Aneurin Bevan and Laurence Olivier, and he was editor of a series of 20 biographies, Prime Ministers of the Twentieth Century.

His last two recent plays, after successful London fringe runs, have now been published by Samuel French: Money Makes You Happy (2008) and The Right Honourable Lady (2009.) An earlier play, The Sons of Catholic Gentlemen, won the Independent Radio Drama Productions award.

A new play, The London Spring, will be seen in London in the new year, and he has just finished reworking Claim and Shame, a specially commissioned play about the MPs’ expenses scandal, after its run at the Theatre 503.

He edits a national magazine for the University of the Third Age and writes for national newspapers and magazine.

Francis Beckett graduated in history and philosophy from the University of Keele in 1969 and was one member of that year’s-two-man debating team sent to tour the USA. He has been president of the National Union of Journalists and worked on two national newspapers; was head of press and publications at the National Union of Students, a trade union head of communications, and a Labour Party press officer; ran his own PR consultancy; and has edited about a dozen magazines and written for many more. He was an organiser for the housing charity Shelter and has taught in schools, adult education, further education and a university (teaching the Journalism MA at the University of Westminster.)