Quentin Letts
Encyclopedia
Quentin Richard Stephen Letts (born 6 February 1963) 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...

 and theatre critic, writing for The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...

, Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...

, Mail on Sunday, The Oldie
The Oldie
The Oldie is a monthly magazine launched in 1992 by Richard Ingrams, who for 23 years was the editor of Private Eye. It carries general interest articles, humour and cartoons, and has an eclectic list of contributors, including James Le Fanu, John Sweeney, Thomas Stuttaford, Virginia Ironside,...

 and New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....

, and previously for 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...

.

Early life

He is the son of Richard Letts and Jocelyn Elizabeth Letts (née Adami). He grew up in Cirencester
Cirencester
Cirencester is a market town in east Gloucestershire, England, 93 miles west northwest of London. Cirencester lies on the River Churn, a tributary of the River Thames, and is the largest town in the Cotswold District. It is the home of the Royal Agricultural College, the oldest agricultural...

 and at one point attended Oakley Hall Preparatory School, which was run by his father. He was later educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College
Haileybury and Imperial Service College
Haileybury and Imperial Service College, , is a prestigious British independent school founded in 1862. The school is located at Hertford Heath, near Hertford, from central London, on of parkland occupied until 1858 by the East India College...

, Bellarmine College, Kentucky (now Bellarmine University
Bellarmine University
Bellarmine University is an independent, private, Catholic university in Louisville, Kentucky. The liberal arts institution opened on October 3, 1950, as Bellarmine College, established by Archbishop John A. Floersh of the Archdiocese of Louisville and named after the Cardinal Saint Robert...

), Trinity College, Dublin
Trinity College, Dublin
Trinity College, Dublin , formally known as the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, was founded in 1592 by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I as the "mother of a university", Extracts from Letters Patent of Elizabeth I, 1592: "...we...found and...

 where he edited a number of publications, including the satirical Piranha
Piranha
A piranha or piraña is a member of family Characidae in order Characiformes, an omnivorous freshwater fish that inhabits South American rivers. In Venezuela, they are called caribes...

, and studied Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1982–86) at Jesus College, Cambridge
Jesus College, Cambridge
Jesus College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The College was founded in 1496 on the site of a Benedictine nunnery by John Alcock, then Bishop of Ely...

, taking a Diploma in Classical Archaeology.

Career

Letts has written for a number of British newspapers since beginning his journalistic career in 1987. His first post was with the Peterborough gossip column in the Daily Telegraph. For a time in the mid-1990s he was New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 correspondent for 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...

. He is the person behind the Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...

s Clement Crabbe
Clement Crabbe
Clement Crabbe is the name of a fictitious columnist for the British Daily Mail newspaper. According to The Guardian newspaper, the actual author of this satirical column is journalist Quentin Letts.- References :...

 column and is also the paper's theatre critic and political sketchwriter. He lists his hobbies in Who's Who
Who's Who (UK)
Who's Who is an annual British publication of biographies which vary in length of about 30,000 living notable Britons.-History:...

 as "gossip" and "character defenestration
Defenestration
Defenestration is the act of throwing someone or something out of a window.The term "defenestration" was coined around the time of an incident in Prague Castle in the year 1618. The word comes from the Latin de- and fenestra...

".

A regular victim of the latter trait was the former Speaker of the British House of Commons Michael Martin
Michael Martin (politician)
Michael John Martin, Baron Martin of Springburn, PC is a British politician, who was the Member of Parliament for Glasgow Springburn from 1979 to 2005, and then for Glasgow North East until 2009...

 whom he nicknamed "Gorbals Mick". Many see this term as offensive, as "Mick" can also be used as a sectarian term of abuse towards Catholics of Irish descent, and Martin is not from and has never lived in the Gorbals
Gorbals
The Gorbals is an area on the south bank of the River Clyde in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. By the late 19th century, it had become over-populated and adversely affected by local industrialisation. Many people lived here because their jobs provided this home and they could not afford their own...

, a poor area of Glasgow.

His columns have been described as "attempts at faintly homophobic humour" in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

, which accused him of being "busy guarding what children should and shouldn't see in the theatre". He has also been accused of misogyny over an attack on Harriet Harman
Harriet Harman
Harriet Ruth Harman QC is a British Labour Party politician, who is the Member of Parliament for Camberwell and Peckham, and was MP for the predecessorPeckham constituency from 1982 to 1997...

.

Letts presented an edition of the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 current affairs programme Panorama
Panorama (TV series)
Panorama is a BBC Television current affairs documentary programme, which was first broadcast in 1953, and is the longest-running public affairs television programme in the world. Panorama has been presented by many well known BBC presenters, including Richard Dimbleby, Robin Day, David Dimbleby...

 broadcast on April 20, 2009. The programme dealt with the growing criticism of the influence of health and safety on various aspects of British life.

Letts has written three books, the bestselling 50 People Who Buggered Up Britain, Bog-Standard Britain, and Letts Rip! all with his UK publisher Constable & Robinson
Constable & Robinson
Constable & Robinson Ltd. is an independent British book publisher of fiction and non-fiction works. Founded in Edinburgh in 1795 by Archibald Constable as Constable & Co. it is probably the oldest independent publisher in the English-speaking world still operating under the name of its...

. In Bog Standard Britain he attacks what he sees as Britain's culture of mediocrity, where political correctness has, in his words "crushed the individualism from our nation of once indignant eccentrics". 50 People Who Buggered Up Britain has sold around 45,000 copies and was reviewed in The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...

 as "an angry book, beautifully written". In a published extract, he argued that 1970s feminist writer Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer is an Australian writer, academic, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century....

 may, by asserting female sexuality, have given rise to the modern phenomenon of "ladettes" and that this encouraged men to behave badly to women, thus doing the cause of equality a disservice.

In March 2010 Letts won "Critic of the Year" at the British Press Awards 2010. The judges called Letts a “phenomenon always out there trudging theatreland, prolific and highly entertaining.”

Personal

Letts married Lois Rathbone in 1996. The couple have a son Claud, and two daughters Eveleen and Honor. They live in How Caple, Herefordshire
Herefordshire
Herefordshire is a historic and ceremonial county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes it is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three counties that comprise the "Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire" NUTS 2 region. It also forms a unitary district known as the...

.
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