Phil Murphy
Phil Murphy hails from Newcastle-on-Tyne, the third of his parents’ six children. He attended Hertford College, Oxford, where he read French and Latin, before completing a postgraduate Diploma in Practical Journalism at City University, London. He worked as a journalist for 17 years, 13 of them as a political journalist based at the Palace of Westminster. After working for regional papers including The Newcastle Journal and The Yorkshire Post, he was appointed Political Editor of the UK’s principal news agency, The Press Association. Phil reported on much of the Thatcher era, John Major’s Government and the first year of the Blair landslide administration.
Shortly after being appointed The Arts Council of England’s Director of Communications, Phil was asked to become the Labour Party’s Director of Communications. He later moved to 10 Downing Street to be a Special Advisor to Tony Blair. Phil then worked in international government relations for FTSE top 10 company BG Group until its buy-out by Shell.
Phil is married to Sophie and they have two children, Alice and Mark. Phil and Sophie now live in Dunbar in East Lothian.
What Next?
Phil is working on a collection of short stories, while he begins research and shapes the outline of his third novel. He is currently exploring a couple of ideas and hopes to begin work on an outline in the near future.
What's Phil reading now and what has he just read?
He is reading William Boyd's The New Confessions - a quality page-turner as ever from Boyd. He is also reading a new publication, Serbia's Balancing Act - Between Russia and the West by Vuk Vuksanovic. Recent books completed include Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Leah Ypi's semi-fictional story about her late grandmother, Indignity: A Life Reimagined. Phil loved her previous book, Free, which questioned which was preferable: Communist Albania or corrupt post-Communism Albania. This latest book is more complex and it is hard to appreciate which aspects are factual and which are fictional but it is a worthwhile read. Hitch-22, the late Christopher Hitchens' memoir is another recently completed volume - an outstanding read, outlining Hitch's intellectual journey and highlighting his brilliant insights and eloquence. Of David Baddiel's My Family. "While I find Baddiel tremendouly amusing, I found some of the content of this unnerving, touching on topics I addressed in my blog on this site, The Ethics of Fiction." Phil also read recently Edna O'Brien's memoir, A Country Girl. "Much of it was extremely good but, by the end, you are aware this was a book she had no enthusiasm to write. Her publishers persuaded her to do so. Phil still lives with the recent memory of Don DeLillo's White Noise ("Hugely enjoyable and remarkable for its prescience a couple of decades ahead of our current conspiracy theory-laden world").