Christopher Pearson

Christopher Pearson (28 August 1951 – 7 June 2013) was an Australian journalist who wrote for national broadsheet The Australian and who for many years before had edited a monthly cultural magazine, The Adelaide Review.

Born in Sydney, he spent most of his life in Adelaide. He received a Bachelor of Arts with Honours from Flinders University as well as a Graduate Diploma in Education from the University of Adelaide.

As proprietor of the Adelaide Review, he bought the name of the Wakefield Press from theSouth Australian government and operated the company from 1986 to 1988.

He was a member of the Council of the National Museum of Australia in 2005/6. He was also on the board of the government-owned SBS television station. He served as a speech writer to the Prime Minister, John Howard (in office 1996-2007), and was a friend and mentor to another Prime Minister, Tony Abbott (2013-2015), whose books he also edited.

He was employed by The Australian, where he wrote commentary and articles that covered a wide variety of cultural and religious matters pertaining to Australian society. He had, on occasion, discussed international issues such as global warming.

In a September 2009 piece in The Australian, Pearson wrote about how he reconciled his homosexuality with his Catholicism. He had converted to Catholicism in 1999.

A selection of Pearson's writings, edited by Nick Cater and Helen Baxendale, was published in 2014 under the title A Better Class of Sunset, with introductions by Abbott and Jack Snelling, both of whom had previously written or spoken admiringly of his work.