Jonathan William Patrick Aitken was born on 30 August 1942 and is a British author, Church of England priest, convicted criminal and former Conservative Party politician.
46 Facts About Jonathan Aitken
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Jonathan Aitken sued the newspaper for libel in response, but the case collapsed, and he was found to have committed perjury during his trial.
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Jonathan Aitken was ordained as an Anglican priest in 2019.
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Jonathan Aitken is a great-nephew of the newspaper magnate and war-time minister, The 1st Baron Beaverbrook.
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Jonathan Aitken's sister is the actress Maria Aitken and his nephew is the actor Jack Davenport.
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Jonathan Aitken is godfather to James Abbott, the son of Labour left-winger Diane Abbott.
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In 1979, Jonathan Aitken married Lolicia Olivera Azucki, a daughter of O Azucki of Zurich, Switzerland; they divorced in 1998.
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The paternity of Jonathan Aitken himself has similarly been under question.
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In December 2008, Dutch historian Cees Fasseur claimed that Jonathan Aitken was the result of a wartime affair between Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and Penelope Jonathan Aitken.
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Jonathan Aitken contracted tuberculosis, and at four years of age was admitted to Cappagh Hospital, Dublin, where he was an inpatient on a TB ward for more than three years, being cared for and educated by Catholic nuns.
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Jonathan Aitken's father was severely injured as an RAF pilot when his Spitfire was shot down during the Second World War.
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Jonathan Aitken recovered and was discharged from the hospital aged seven.
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Jonathan Aitken lived with his parents at Halesworth, Suffolk, and learnt to walk properly again within a few months.
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Jonathan Aitken attended Eton College and read law at Christ Church, Oxford.
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Jonathan Aitken served as a war correspondent during the 1960s in Vietnam and Biafra, and gained a reputation for risk-taking when he took LSD in 1966 as an experiment for an article in the London Evening Standard and had a bad trip: "this drug needs police, the Home Office and a dictator to stamp it out".
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Jonathan Aitken was a journalist at Yorkshire Television from 1968 to 1970, presenting the regional news show Calendar.
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Jonathan Aitken was the first person to be seen on screen from Yorkshire Television when it began broadcasting.
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In 1970, Jonathan Aitken was acquitted at the Old Bailey for breaching section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911, when he photocopied a report about the British government's supply of arms to Nigeria, and sent a copy to The Sunday Telegraph and to Hugh Fraser, a pro-Biafran Tory MP.
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Jonathan Aitken managed to offend PM Margaret Thatcher by ending a relationship with her daughter, Carol Thatcher, and suggesting that Thatcher "probably thinks Sinai is the plural of Sinus" to an Egyptian newspaper.
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Jonathan Aitken stayed on the backbenches throughout Thatcher's premiership, as well as participating in the re-launch of TV-AM, when broadcaster Anna Ford threw her wine at him to express her outrage at both his behaviour and the unwelcome consequent transformation of the TV station.
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Jonathan Aitken wrote a highly confidential letter to Thatcher in early 1980, dealing with allegations that the former Director-General of MI5, Sir Roger Hollis, had been a double agent working for the Soviet Union.
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Jonathan Aitken became Minister of State for Defence Procurement under prime minister John Major in 1992.
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Jonathan Aitken was later accused of violating ministerial rules by allowing an Arab businessman to pay for his stay in the Paris Ritz, perjured himself and was jailed.
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Jonathan Aitken became Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 1994, a Cabinet position, but resigned in 1995 following the allegations that he had violated ministerial rules.
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Jonathan Aitken had called a press conference at the Conservative Party offices in Smith Square, London, at 5 pm that same day denouncing the claims and demanding that the World in Action documentary, which was due to be screened three hours later, withdraw them.
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The action collapsed in June 1997 when The Guardian and Granada produced, via their counsel George Carman QC, evidence countering his claim that his wife, Lolicia Jonathan Aitken, paid for the hotel stay at the Ritz Hotel in Paris.
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Jonathan Aitken was charged with perjury and perverting the course of justice and, after pleading guilty on 8 June 1999 to both offences, was sentenced to jail for 18 months of which he served almost seven months as a custodial sentence.
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Jonathan Aitken was unable to cover the legal costs of his libel trial and was declared bankrupt.
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Jonathan Aitken became one of the few people to resign from the Privy Council.
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Jonathan Aitken attended the Alpha Course in 1997, which he said stirred his interest in Christianity.
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Jonathan Aitken attended the course on further occasions prior to imprisonment.
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Jonathan Aitken was allowed to drop the case on promising to pay costs, but then escaped from the liability when he declared himself bankrupt and revealed that most of his apparent assets turn out to be conveniently owned by other people.
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In 2006 Jonathan Aitken became honorary president of Christian Solidarity Worldwide.
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On 30 June 2018, Jonathan Aitken was ordained in the Church of England as a deacon by Sarah Mullally, the Bishop of London.
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Exactly one year after becoming deacon, on 30 June 2019, Jonathan Aitken was ordained as an Anglican priest in St Mary's Church, Stoke Newington, by the Bishop of London.
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Jonathan Aitken later declared his support for the United Kingdom Independence Party a week before the party's equally strong performance as the Liberal Democrats, with both parties winning 12 seats each in the 2004 European elections.
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On 2 October 2004, Jonathan Aitken attended the conference and re-iterated his support for the party.
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Jonathan Aitken said this was not part of a political comeback.
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In September 2020 Jonathan Aitken had held a pass continuously since at least December 2015.
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Jonathan Aitken, it has been shown over time, is a figure we can always learn something from, a kind of walking, well-groomed Grimm's fairy tale.
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In 2009 Jonathan Aitken published a biography of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the President of Kazakhstan, with the subject's cooperation.
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Jonathan Aitken has written several Christian religious books since his release from prison.
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Jonathan Aitken has published two books of prayers, Prayers for People under Pressure, and Psalms for People Under Pressure, and wrote a biography of the English slaver and Anglican clergyman John Newton, John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace, in 2007.
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Jonathan Aitken has written several biographies of political figures, including the President of the United States Richard Nixon.
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Jonathan Aitken wrote on Nixon's co-conspirator in the Watergate scandal, Charles Colson.
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Jonathan Aitken published a book of personal recollections of Margaret Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality, after her death in 2013.