Quick Facts
Biography
Patrick Wintour (born 1 November 1954) is a British journalist and Diplomatic Editor of The Guardian newspaper. He was Political Editor of "The Guardian" from 2006–2015and was formerly the newspaper's Chief Political Correspondent for two periods, from 1988–1996, and 2000–2006. In the intervening period he was Political Editor of The Observer newspaper.
Early life and education
Wintour was born on 1 November 1954, the son of former Evening Standard editor Charles Vere Wintour by his marriage to Eleanor "Nonie" Trego Baker (1917–1995), an American, the daughter of a Harvard law professor. His parents married in 1940 and divorced in 1979. His elder sister, Anna Wintour, is the current Editor-in-Chief of the American edition of Vogue magazine. His brother Jim arranged equestrian events at the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Wintour was educated at The Hall School in Hampstead, Westminster School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. At Westminster, he was a contemporary of Adam Mars-Jones and Chris Huhne.
Life and career
Known for his contacts inside the Labour Party, Wintour began his career in journalism on the New Statesman from 1976 to 1982, before joining The Guardian as chief Labour Correspondent in 1983. From 1988, he was the paper's Chief Political Correspondent, 1988–1996, and then Political Editor of The Observer, The Guardian's Sunday sister paper, until 2000. He returned to The Guardian as Chief Political Correspondent in 2000 before being appointed political editor in 2006, on the retirement of Michael White. Wintour won the British Press Awards "Political Journalist of the Year" award in 2007.
In October 2015, Wintour moved to a new role as The Guardian's Diplomatic Editor. In December Anushka Asthana and Heather Stewart were appointed to succeed him in a job share arrangement. All three will take up their new roles at the beginning of 2016.
Wintour's second wife is Rachel Sylvester, a journalist for The Times. The couple have two children, while Wintour also has two older children from his former marriage to the journalist Madeleine Bunting.