Matthew d'Ancona

Journalist and author

Matthew d'Ancona was born in Lewisham in 1968. He went to Magdalen College at the University of Oxford, where he studied Modern History. He was elected a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford in 1989.

After a year studying medieval confession, d'Ancona joined the magazine Index on Censorship, before proceeding to the Times as a trainee. There he rose to become education correspondent and then assistant editor at the age of 26.

He joined the Sunday Telegraph in 1996 as deputy comment editor and columnist, before becoming deputy editor. He wrote a weekly political column in the Sunday Telegraph for a decade, in which role he was ‘treated as the best insight into Cameronism by Conservative MPs’. He succeeded Boris Johnson as editor of the Spectator. He stepped down from this role in 2009.

In January 2015, d'Ancona joined the Guardian as a weekly columnist. He left the paper in 2019. He also writes columns for the Evening Standard, GQ, and the New York Times.  D'Ancona has also written several articles for the British political magazine Prospect.

He is now editor and partner of Tortoise Media, a British news website specialising in open journalism and the delivery of ‘slow news’ as an antidote to clickbait, sensationalism, and a perceived decline in thoughtful journalism in recent years.

D'Ancona is also the co-author of two books on early Christian theology, The Jesus Papyrus and The Quest for the True Cross. He has written three novels, Going East, Tabatha's Code, and Nothing to Fear.

He is chairman of the liberal conservative think tank, Bright Blue, a trustee of the Science Museum, and a Visiting Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London.