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.
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 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. He heard her talk about the latest book on the radio recently and felt it sounded intriguing. Recently finished Hitch-22, the late Christopher Hitchens' memoir - an outstanding read, outlining Hitch's intellectual journey and highlighting his brilliant eloquence. He is still working through Victor Hugo - an autobiography by Graham Robb, with a view to writing a short story around it. Phil very much enjoyed Scattershot - Life, Music, Elton and Me by Bernie Taupin, which was interesting for his insights into the great people he met (from Salvador Dali to Bob Dylan) rather than as a chronological account of his work with Elton John. He recently completed David Baddiel's My Family. "While I find Baddiel tremensouly 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 recentl 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").