James Harding is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

. In December 2007, he was named editor of The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

 newspaper, following Robert Thomson's

Robert James Thomson

Robert James Thomson is an Australian journalist and the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal. He is former editor of The Times newspaper in London, England. On 20 May 2008 News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch named Thomson as the paper's new managing editor, succeeding Marcus Brauchli...

 appointment as publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

Harding was educated at the independent St. Paul's School in Barnes, near Hammersmith

Hammersmith

Hammersmith is an urban centre in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in west London, England, in the United Kingdom, approximately five miles west of Charing Cross on the north bank of the River Thames...

 in London, followed by Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

 (where he attained a First Class degree in history) and City University

City University Journalism Department

The Department of Journalism at City University London is one of the world's leading journalism schools. It is considered the best university in the United Kingdom in that field of study as well as the nation's largest centre for journalism education...

. Harding also spent a year studying at Davidson College in the United States. Before entering the media, he worked as a speechwriter to Koichi Kato

Koichi Kato (LDP)

is a Japanese politician . Born in Tsuruoka, Yamagata Prefecture, he is a member of the House of Representatives and the Liberal Democratic Party.- Political career :...

, who was Chief Secretary to the Cabinet

Chief Cabinet Secretary

__notoc__The of Japan is a Minister of State who is responsible for directing the Cabinet Secretariat. The main function of Chief Cabinet Secretary is to coordinate the policies of ministries and agencies in the executive branch...

 of Japan, and for the Japan unit of the European Commission

European Commission

The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....

. He began his journalistic career at the Financial Times

Financial Times

The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....

 in 1994 and two years later opened the paper's Shanghai

Shanghai

Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...

 bureau. After serving for three years as the Financial Times Washington bureau chief, he joined The Times in 2006 as Business Editor.

As editor of The Times, Harding was responsible for the cancellation of the Times2 supplement in March 2010 and its re-introduction in October of the same year following complaints from readers.

Harding speaks English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, Mandarin

Standard Mandarin

Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....

 and Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

.

He is the youngest person to become editor of The Times.

His book Alpha Dogs was published in spring 2008.