Matthew d'Ancona

"Personally, I'd rather be a poodle than a cheese-eating surrender monkey." - Matthew d'Ancona

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Matthew Robert Ralph d'Ancona (born 27 January 1968) is a British journalist who was editor of The Spectator from February 2006 to August 2009. A ‘who’s who’ report compiled for Barack Obama by US intelligence in early 2009 listed him amongst the UK’s most influential commentators.

D'Ancona came to prominence in 1995 when he published leaked details of a framework document on the future of Northern Ireland, in what was widely seen as a unionist attempt to disrupt the peace process. The scoop owed much to d'Ancona's links with right-wing Tory circles that might nowadays be labelled neoconservative. Despite, or perhaps because of, this, he has maintained a cordial relationship with New Labour.

In addition to his journalism, d'Ancona has been involved with a number of think tanks. In 2006, he was briefly on the board of Editorial Intelligence, but resigned amid a wave of criticism of its attempt to institutionalise networking between journalists and the P.R. industry.

He is the co-author with Carsten Peter Thiede of several books which purport to prove key elements of the New Testament story. Their claims have been strongly questioned by other Biblical scholars.

Background and education

He was born in South London on 27 January 1968, to Helen and John, a high-ranking civil servant. He was educated at St Dunstan's College, and at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he gained a first in history. He was elected a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford in 1989.

Career

• The Times 1991-1995, rising to assistant editor;
• The Jesus Papyrus (with CP Thiede, 1996)
• deputy editor of comment, Sunday Telegraph, 1996-1998;
• deputy editor, Sunday Telegraph, 1998-2006;
• Going East (2003)
• director for the Centre for Policy Studies,
• member of the Millennium Commission, 2001-6
• Demos advisor;
• Political Journalist of the Year, British Press Awards 2004
• Editor of the Spectator, 2006-

Politics

In 1995 the Guardian identified him as part of a rising generation of '21st Century Tories':

From the outside it is not always easy to see the novelty in the various mutations of conservative thinking that well-up out of the party's troubles. Successive generations of young Tory thinkers appear much the same - well spoken Oxbridge graduates, astir with the decline of Britain and the conservative establishment. Is there anything really so new about Roberts, or indeed Matthew D'Ancona (Times and Fellow of All Souls), Niall Ferguson (Telegraph and Don at Jesus College, Oxford), Michael Gove (BBC and former president of the Oxford Union), Anne Applebaum (Yale and deputy editor of the Spectator), Paul Goodman (Telegraph and former chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students) and Dean Godson (Telegraph)?

Well, yes. The first obvious distinction is that its members come from widely different backgrounds and that most of them were literally children of the sixties. Gove and D'Ancona were products of standard middle-class families and although Roberts has the whiff of the grand Tory about him, he picks his friends, according to one of The Group, "to find the same mindset and congenial companions, rather than attempt to create a young England clique". Most of them have links with, or were at, Oxford - unlike their predecessors in the seventies who had strong connections with Peterhouse College, Cambridge.

D'Ancona describes himself as right of centre ("to say otherwise would obviously be lying").

Politically, he straddles the centre ground - as comfortable chatting to Tony Blair as advising Cameron. Like Blair he is attracted by the catholic end of Anglicanism and is the author of two books of biblical history.

A former Times education correspondent, he is sympathetic to decentralisation of public services, and as a Telegraph columnist since 1996 he has tracked New Labour with a critical respect and knowledge unique among right-of-centre writers.

Peter Oborne has suggested that d'Ancona's interest in Tony Blair's brand of religiosity informs his support for Blair's foreign wars.

“D'Ancona is one of many who see Blair's Christian faith as the key to understanding his personality as prime minister, insisting that it lends a special moral dimension to everything he does, setting him apart from less devout politicians. D'Ancona, who has spoken at length to Blair about his religion, asserts that the Kosovo war also was inspired by the Prime Minister's Christian commitment. Indeed, Tony Blair was the first to use the term 'crusade' in connection with the Balkans, a regrettable phrase later appropriated by President Bush in the aftermath of 11 September."

Oborne describes d'Ancona as a Blair apologist who has yet to explain fully how “religious belief can be at the core of the Prime Minister's conduct of the war at a time when pretty well every Church leader, from the Pope to the Archbishop of Canterbury, has been opposed to it all along.”

On Britain and David Cameron

D'Ancona has argued that the film 'Love Actually' 'seems to have burrowed its way into the national consciousness' and was popular in the UK 'because it captured perfectly, in the language of cinematic sentimentality, one way in which the British now see themselves.' 'Its lead characters' says d'Ancona 'embody classless affluence, generosity, racial diversity and a national contentment both with the roots of tradition and with the possibilities of modernity'. The Spectator editor adds that the "informality" and niceness of all this has set the stage for a David Cameron victory — that Hugh Grant's and Cameron's Notting Hill has captured the mood of the nation. He contrasts Cameron with the 'reactionary Right', who want the 'British to be angry, pessimistic and snobbish'.

Yet some of d'Ancona's own connections and views are not sharply removed from the reactionary right. He was formerly close to the SDP, but latterly joined the board of the Thatcherite Centre for Policy Studies.

Northern Ireland peace process leak

D'Ancona strongly criticised John Major's approach to the peace process in an article published during the 1994 Conservative Conference, warning that "the Conservative Party of the Citizen's Charter, open government and contracting out is very different from the Conservative Party of Bonar Law, Randolph Churchill and Enoch Powell:

For Mr Major's policy in Ulster is profoundly mistrusted by many of his own party activists which is making the whips very nervous this week. On the conference floor, most of this discontent will be stage-managed out of sight when Ireland is debated today. Because so few backbenchers have dared to question the Downing Street declaration, there will be no obvious focus for sceptical consideration of the peace process.

This is why an independent study group on Northern Ireland, of which I am a member, chose the week of the conference to publish a report setting out an alternative approach. One of the inspirations of the group, which has been meeting under the auspices of the Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies, has been the anxieties of ordinary Tories (and many Labour supporters) that the virtues of the current manoeuvrings are not quite as obvious as their leaders suppose.

According to Julian Glover, this episode in d'Ancona's career "marked a dalliance with Tory unionism, some way from his early SDP sympathies and links to the Tory wet Social Market Foundation".

As a Times columnist in 1995 D'Ancona secured extracts from the framework agreement on the Northern Ireland peace process. John Major claims that these were leaked selectively to destroy talks - and it almost worked.

Dick Spring, the foreign minister and deputy premier, said the Times article made "a totally selective and tendentious" use of excerpts from the draft document, which he said was "calculated to alarm Unionists rather than inform the public".

Mr Spring said the article had to be judged in terms of the "blatant political agenda behind it" and appealed to all sides to reserve judgement until the full document had been published.

Last night it was becoming clear that a caucus of fervent Loyalists under the umbrella of a Unionist study group is closely associated with the leaker. It is made up of PR man David Burnside, D'Ancona himself; Dean Godson, a Daily Telegraph staff reporter; Paul Goodman, Northern Ireland correspondent on the Sunday Telegraph; Noel Malcolm, a historian and Daily Telegraph political columnist; Andrew McHallam, executive director of the Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies; Charles Moore, editor of the Sunday Telegraph; Simon Pearce, a Conservative election candidate; company director Justin Shaw and historian Andrew Roberts. One of the group said last night: 'We didn't want the position when the framework document was published of being out in the cold as we were over the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985. There was a coming together of minds over what should be done.'

Dean Godson claims in his biography of David Trimble that it was David Burnside who arranged the leak to d'Ancona, described as 'a prominent Trimble fan in the London media.'

D'Ancona said he been tasked to write the story by Times editor Peter Stothard and rejected suggestions he was biased:

"I emphatically deny that it was designed to wreck the peace process," he said."I am very annoyed by the suggestion that the report was highly selective. I think we gave fair space to the key points" concerning neutrality of the British Government on the constitutional future of Northern Ireland.

Attacking Livingstone

In the wake of the 7/7 bombings in London, d'Ancona attacked Ken Livingstone over the then London Mayor's call for the media to end their fixation with 'the most minority strand amongst the Muslim community':

The shame of it is that, in the immediate aftermath of the bombings, Mr Livingstone's performance was nothing short of magnificent... At the vigil held in Trafalgar Square on July 14, Mr Livingstone warmed to his theme. "Those who came here to kill last Thursday had many goals," he said, "but one was that we should turn on each other, like animals trapped in a cage, and they failed, totally and utterly."

With tears streaming down his cheeks, he quoted Pericles, and in homage to John F Kennedy's famous call - Lass'sie nach Berlin kommen - the mayor declared: "Let them come to London!" On that day, only the most churlish would have denied that Mr Livingstone spoke to, and for, his city. So it was all the more depressing to hear him revert to type yesterday as he spouted the fatuous Left-wing mantras for which he earned his notoriety in the 1980s.

While claiming that he felt no sympathy for the suicide bombers and (naturally) that "killing people is wrong", he resurrected the pernicious old doctrine of moral equivalence, beloved of the Left in the Cold War. "I don't just denounce the suicide bombers," he said. "I denounce those governments that use indiscriminate slaughter to advance their foreign policy" - by which he meant Israel, and, one presumed, America. So, too, he deployed the whiskery argument that western imperialism is at the root of all evil... Is he truly blaming the murder of 56 commuters on the Balfour Declaration, and the 1920 San Remo Conference?

And would the mayor be willing to tell the bereaved relatives of Shahara Islam, the 20-year-old from Plaistow who was buried on Friday, or of James Adams, 32, from Peterborough, and Monika Suchocka, 23, a Pole who was living in north London (both of whom were named as among the dead on Tuesday), that their loved ones would still be alive if not for the Treaty of Versailles?

D'Ancona's piece was singled out for criticism in a review of the media coverage of the bombings by antiwar group Justice not Vengeance:

This was not the burden of Mr Livingstone's remarks. He said that the history of the last 90 years was the background to what had happened, but that "the particular problem we have at the moment is that in the 1980s... the Americans recruited and trained Osama Bin Laden" and started this insurgency which has now come back to haunt the West (it's not strictly accurate that bin Laden himself was recruited, trained or financed by the CIA, but the movement that he was part of, and which he draws from certainly did benefit from such generosity).

And the mayor also talked about the present, about the behaviour of the United States and Britain in the last few years: "A lot of young people see the double standards, they see what happens in Guantanamo Bay, and they just think that there isn't a just foreign policy." This kind of realism about the sources of the London atrocities (Ken Livingstone has of course condemned the atrocities themselves, and was a prime mover in the 'London United' events in reaction to the bombings) is supported by the public (which sees a connection between the bombings and British foreign policy, as we know from the Guardian poll) but is anathema to the government and its supporters'.

On Iraq

My own view is that withdrawal from Iraq should barely be on the agenda at present: let us see what the Petraeus report says before we even debate the issue. And let us not forget that, if we leave Iraq to the mercy of the extremists, we shall have to go back before too long. As a hawk, I am happy to admit that terrible mistakes were made over Iraq. But that does not alter the fundamental character of this global threat or – in my view – the moral responsibility of the Conservative Party to provide a robust strategy to deal with it, consistent with its Atlanticist traditions and its historic readiness to confront the world as it is rather than as the Left would like it to be. I would like to see more evidence that Cameron is engaged by this generational challenge: George Osborne and Michael Gove certainly are.

On Crime

In my view, no party can be too tough on crime. It is the mods’ greatest error to believe that being cuddly about crime is a necessary part of the “decontamination” strategy. If anything, hug-a-hoodie put rocket boosters under Labour’s claim that the Tory Party is now in the hands of toffs with no concept of real life.

Editorial Intelligence

D'Ancona was at one time a member of the advisory board of Editorial Intelligence.

One journalist who has signed up for EI's advisory board is Matthew d'Ancona, the new editor of The Spectator, but only after receiving a written undertaking from Hobsbawm that he would not be offered any remuneration.

D'Ancona said: "This is an intriguing attempt to explore the contacts and frictions between the worlds of PR and journalism. I do not believe this will bring any conflict of interest to my primary role. If money was involved I would feel uncomfortable about that, but it isn't."

However, a "private and confidential letter" sent to other would-be members of the advisory board says: "Should you stay as a main adviser, you will be paid £ 1,000 per year as a small fee, in return for attending one (or) two networking events hosted by EI with clients. This will not involve you providing endorsement of any kind to any clients and should not present a conflict of interest.

"In addition, any other consulting opportunities which arise will be offered first to advisory board members who will earn a percentage of total fees taken by EI."

D'Ancona was to reverse his position within days of the Sunday Times article:

D'Ancona has just resigned from the Advisory Board of Editorial Intelligence, Julia Hobsbawm's networking venture for journalists and PRs.

"I decided on Sunday," d'Ancona tells me. "It had become too much of a distraction, to be honest." Not exactly a PR coup for the company, which has already been the subject of attacks from media commentators such as Cristina Odone and Polly Toynbee.

Hobsbawm, the public-relations guru who once ran a company with Sarah Macaulay, the wife of Gordon Brown, set up EI only last November but a growing number of critics questioned whether journalists should sup with spin doctors.

Many thought d'Ancona's own position became untenable after Speccie associate editor Rod Liddle waded into the row over the weekend. Liddle ranted that it was a "disgusting idea" that journalists and PRs should schmooze. Probably not a diplomatic line for Liddle to take with his new boss. But did he persuade d'Ancona to throw in the towel? "Er, no, no, it had nothing to do with that," says d'Ancona.

Journalist Stephen Glover commented:

One marvels how these people could have got mixed up with Editorial Intelligence in the first place. How could the cause of good journalism possibly be strengthened by a PR operation whose main purpose is to help companies manipulate the media? Mr D'Ancona is quoted as saying that Editorial Intelligence had become too much of a "distraction". The truth is that he and others have belatedly woken up to the fact that they had no business helping a PR organisation.

Books

Books include:

• The Jesus Papyrus (with CP Thiede, 1996)
• The Quest for the True Cross by Carsten Peter Thiede and Matthew D'Ancona (Paperback - 2000)
• The Jesus Papyrus: The Most Sensational Evidence on the Origins of the Gospels Since the Discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Carsten Peter Thiede and Matthew D'Ancona (Paperback - Mar 2000)
• Going East (2003)
• The Emmaus Mystery: Discovering Evidence for the Risen Christ by Carsten Peter Thiede and Matthew D'Ancona (2005)
• Tabatha's Code (2006)

D'Ancona is the co-author of several books on early Christianity which have been severely criticised by New Testament scholars.

He has also written thrillers such as Tabatha's Code (2006): (The blurb includes this: “As Nick is kidnapped by secret-service agents, his personal life spirals even further out of control, and he realizes he is just a pawn in the hands of obscure forces, and his former lover the head of a most dangerous network of anti-global terrorists.”)

The Jesus Papyrus

D'Ancona co-authored the 1996 book, The Jesus Papyrus with German scholar Carsten Peter Thiede. The book argued that a papyrus fragment held at Magdalen College could be dated to A.D. 60, corroborating the literal truth of the Gospels.

The scholarship on which the book is based has been strongly criticised by a number of New Testament scholars.

D'Ancona, who seems to have been either taken in by Thiede's persuasiveness or merely alert to sniffing out a 'good story' became Thiede's staunchest advocate and apologist not only in The Times but in The Daily Mail and elsewhere. Many column inches, reports, interviews and even a leader article in The Times gave Thiede's claims an unwarranted attention, that shows little sign of abating nearly five years on.

The initial interest in 1994 subsequently gave rise to the book The Jesus Papyrus. Comparatively few of its 163 pages concentrate on the essence of the article in the Zeitschrift für Papyrologie. Instead, the book is padded out with background information, and extraneous detail, including the revisiting of the other lost cause - 7Q5 and Mark. The book is full of errors and howlers: the ideas are Thiede's, the writing seems to have been ghosted by d'Ancona who has frequently ill-digested the necessary Biblical and textual background.

The Quest for the True Cross

Thiede and d'Ancona went on to co-author The Quest for the True Cross which focuses on the Titulus Crucis, a relic kept at the church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome. According to their publisher, "Thiede and d'Ancona have amassed evidence that this fragment is not only genuine, but that it was brought to Rome by Queen Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, who, according to legend, found the cross in Jerusalem in AD326 on the site where the Church of the Holy Sepulcre now stands."

A subsequent radiocarbon test of the Titulus Crucis concluded that it dated to circa AD 980-1146.

The Emmaus Mystery

D'Ancona wrote an introduction for Thiede's posthumous book The Emmaus Mystery, which purported to establish the location where Jesus appeared after the resurrection. One reviewer concluded: "The book is well written for a broad general audience, but its interpretation goes beyond what the evidence allows. Not recommended."

Connections

D'Ancona was appointed as a Millennium Commissioner between 2001 to 2006 (the Millennium Commission distributes Lottery money). The BBC in 2006 reported that as well as being a member of the Millennium Commission, he was also a director of the Centre for Policy Studies, a member of the Social Market Foundation's policy advisory board, and a member of the board of Index on Censorship.

In 2000, Charlie Whelan suggested that d'Ancona was the favourite to succeed Boris Johnson as editor of the The Spectator. "The smart money is on the respected Sunday Telegraph columnist Matthew d'Ancona, because the winner of this race usually comes out of the stables of Conrad Black, the magazine's proprietor." Anne McElvoy made a similar point six months later, suggesting that d'Ancona's "familiarity with Conrad Black and his shrewd chief executive, Dan Coulson" would be a factor in his favour in the race to succeed then Spectator editor Boris Johnson in 2006. In the event, D'Ancona did not succeed Johnson until 2006, two years after Black had sold his interest in the magazine.

During the Conservative leadership election in 2001, Charles Powell told d'Ancona that Lady Thatcher supported Michael Portillo. Thatcher repudiated the story after it was reported by d'Ancona's paper, the Sunday Telegraph, doing significant damage to Portillo's chances.

D'Ancona's wife, Sarah Schaefer is the Director of the Europe Programme at the Foreign Policy Centre. She previously worked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and as a political correspondent at The Independent . A former Director of Communications at the Social Market Foundation , she was more recently political adviser at the FCO to Dr Denis MacShane when he was Europe Minister as well as special adviser to Defra minister David Miliband . More recently, she was Director of Strategy and Communications at Britain in Europe

Affiliations

• Centre for Policy Studies, former Board member
• E!Sharp - Contributor
• Demos - adviser
• Social Market Foundation - former member Policy Advisory Board
• Index on Censorship - board member