James Hanning
James Hanning is the author of LOVE AND DECEPTION: PHILBY IN BEIRUT, the revealing story of how double agent Kim Philby fell in love with and married Eleanor Brewer before vanishing mysteriously in January 1963. The book was published by the Corsair imprint of Little, Brown in 2021 and the USA in 2022.
James’s previous book, with Francis Elliott, was CAMERON: THE RISE OF THE NEW CONSERVATIVE, written when they were colleagues at the Independent on Sunday and published by Fourth Estate in 2007.
James went on to be the paper’s Deputy Editor and Francis to be political editor of the Times. Their biography, the first, of then New Tory leader and now Prime Minister, David Cameron, broke much new ground and received excellent critical acclaim: ‘an essential political textbook’, ‘this highly rewarding biography lays out the story brilliantly’, ‘they’ve done their research, and it shows’. CAMERON was significantly updated when it was published in paperback in 2009 and again in 2012.
In 2014 James wrote THE NEWS MACHINE: HOW THE TABLOID NEWS IS MANUFACTURED, in collaboration with Glenn Mulcaire, the News of the World’s chief investigator who went to prison for his part in the phone hacking scandal. James was the first journalist to be taken into Glenn Mulcaire’s confidence, who talked exclusively about extensive unlawful activity at the newspaper. The book, described by Peter Oborne as ‘reading like a thriller’, was published by Gibson Square Books.
James Hanning lives in west London with his wife Emma Robertshaw and their daughters Eleanor and Alice.