36 Facts About Melanie Phillips

1.

Melanie Phillips was born on 4 June 1951 and is a British journalist, author, and public commentator.

2.

Melanie Phillips began her career writing for The Guardian and New Statesman.

3.

Melanie Phillips has appeared as a panellist on the BBC Radio 4 programme The Moral Maze and BBC One's Question Time.

4.

Melanie Phillips was awarded the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 1996, while she was writing for The Observer.

5.

Melanie Phillips's books include the memoir Guardian Angel: My Story, My Britain.

6.

Melanie Phillips was born in Hammersmith, the daughter of Mabel and Alfred Phillips.

7.

Melanie Phillips's family is Jewish and emigrated to Britain from Poland and Russia.

8.

Melanie Phillips was educated at Putney High School, a girls' fee-paying independent school in Putney, London.

9.

Melanie Phillips trained as a journalist on the Evening Echo, a local newspaper in Hemel Hempstead.

10.

Melanie Phillips joined The Guardian newspaper in 1977, becoming its social services correspondent and social policy leader writer.

11.

Melanie Phillips left The Guardian in 1993, saying that her relationship with the paper and its readers had become "like a really horrific family argument".

12.

Melanie Phillips took her opinion column to The Guardian sister-paper The Observer, then to The Sunday Times in 1998, before beginning her association with the tabloid Daily Mail in 2001.

13.

Melanie Phillips wrote for The Jewish Chronicle, The Jerusalem Post and other periodicals.

14.

In November 2010, The Spectator and Melanie Phillips apologised and agreed to pay substantial compensation and legal costs to a prominent British Muslim they falsely accused of antisemitism.

15.

Melanie Phillips had a weekly radio show on Voice of Israel, is a regular panellist on BBC Radio's The Moral Maze and appears frequently on BBC TV's signature political shows Question Time and The Daily Politics.

16.

The BBC has said that Melanie Phillips "is regarded as one of the [British] media's leading right-wing voices" and a "controversial" columnist.

17.

Melanie Phillips herself stated in 2006, during an interview with Jackie Ashley for the newspaper, that it often misrepresents her opinions.

18.

Melanie Phillips was heavily criticised for an article she wrote in The Jewish Chronicle which suggested that "the taunt of Islamophobia is used to silence any criticism of the Islamic world, including Islamic extremism" and "facilitates" antisemitism.

19.

Melanie Phillips is a staunch critic of Iran and has written and spoken frequently about the threat she perceives it to be, particularly if it were to obtain nuclear weapons.

20.

Melanie Phillips has drawn criticism for her hard-line approach from The Guardian commentators.

21.

Early in the presidency of Barack Obama, Melanie Phillips accused him of "adopting the agenda of the Islamist" and of being "firmly in the Islamists' camp".

22.

Shortly after Obama's re-election for a second term, Melanie Phillips said that "Four years ago, America put into the White House a sulky narcissist with an unbroken history of involvement in thuggish, corrupt, far-left, black power, Jew-bashing, west-hating politics".

23.

Melanie Phillips warned that Obama would lead America into a "terrifying darkness".

24.

Melanie Phillips' published views on these topics have been rebutted by scientists and academics, including John Krebs and Nicholas Stern.

25.

Melanie Phillips supported Andrew Wakefield, whose fraudulent work triggered controversy about the MMR vaccine and led to his being struck off the medical register.

26.

Melanie Phillips expressed opposition to Irish independence, declaring on 7 March 2017 in her column in The Times, that the "most troublesome bits" of the UK are "showing signs of disuniting".

27.

Melanie Phillips denounced "attempts at secession by tribes" in Northern Ireland.

28.

Melanie Phillips is ambivalent about the Northern Ireland peace process, stating that, on the one hand, it has strengthened the Union with Great Britain and saved lives, but that, on the other hand, it has rewarded terrorism, "undermined the rule of law", and exchanged bombs for "paramilitary, mafia-style control of some areas of Northern Ireland".

29.

In June 2014, in the context of Britain's first entirely secret trial for centuries, Melanie Phillips said that such legal proceedings are justifiable in certain circumstances.

30.

Melanie Phillips has argued that the Conservative Party lost its way after the retirement of Margaret Thatcher.

31.

Melanie Phillips stated that the UK Independence Party is prepared to embody "truly conservative attitudes" and has attracted a sizeable protest vote, despite its "unsustainable spending policies".

32.

One academic critic said that "Melanie Phillips gets Dewey quite wrong," for example in claims that Dewey promoted ahistoric and cultureless education.

33.

Melanie Phillips became a "scathing critic of modern Britain" which she regards as "a debauched and disorderly culture of instant gratification, with disintegrating families, feral children and violence, squalor and vulgarity on the streets".

34.

Melanie Phillips said the UK government was brainwashing children by including references to gay people in lessons in schools.

35.

Melanie Phillips received the 'Bigot of the Year' award from gay equality organisation Stonewall in 2011.

36.

Melanie Phillips is married to Joshua Rozenberg, former legal affairs editor for the BBC.