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Simon Kuper

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Simon Kuper
Simon Kuper in 2026
Born
Simon Gad Kuper

(1969-10-15) 15 October 1969 (age 56)
Kampala, Uganda
EducationUniversity of Oxford (BA)
OccupationJournalist
Known for
SpousePamela Druckerman
Awards
Websitewww.ft.com/simon-kuper Edit this at Wikidata

Simon Gad Kuper is a British, and naturalised French,[1] author and journalist, best known for his work at the Financial Times and as a football commentator.[2][3]

Born in Uganda to South African parents, Kuper spent most of his childhood in the Netherlands and lives in Paris. After studies at the University of Oxford,[4] Harvard University[5] and the Technische Universität Berlin,[citation needed] Kuper started his career in journalism at the Financial Times in 1994, where he writes about a wide range of topics, such as politics, society, culture, arts and sports.[6][7][8][2] He also writes for other publications and has written a number of books.

Early life and education

[edit]

Kuper was born in Uganda of South African-born parents, and moved to Leiden in the Netherlands as a child.[citation needed] Kuper's father Adam Kuper, was a professor in anthropology at Leiden University.[9] He was brought up Jewish[10] and is named after his paternal grandfather, Simon Meyer Kuper, who was a South African Supreme Court judge assassinated in 1963.[11]

He studied History and German[12] at the University of Oxford, and attended Harvard University as a Kennedy Scholar in 1993.[5]

Career

[edit]

Journalism

[edit]

Financial Times

[edit]

Kuper joined the Financial Times in 1994. He wrote the daily currencies column and worked in other departments, before leaving in 1998. He returned in 2002 as a sports columnist and has worked there ever since. Kuper's sportswriting is appreciated for its exploration of the societal, political and cultural impact of sports globally.[4] Kuper discusses the culture that surrounds football — such as the Old Firm rivalry — as well as the on-field play.[13] He has written on cricket, with articles on cricket in the Netherlands[14] and cricket in apartheid South Africa.[15]

Kuper also contributes to the FT's Weekend magazine, as a Life & Arts columnist, often with long-form essays and interviews spanning themes such as current affairs, travel, history and politics.[16][6][17][18]

Kuper was awarded the British Society of Magazine Editors' prize for Columnist of the Year in 2016[7] and 2020.[8]

Other publications

[edit]

Kuper has also written for The Times and The Observer[19] ESPN,[20] and The Spectator.[21]

Kuper also writes in Dutch, and his work frequently appeared in publications including the newspapers NRC Handelsblad[22] and Het Financieele Dagblad,[23] the literary football magazine Hard Gras and the online newspaper De Correspondent.[24]

Authorship

[edit]
  • 2003 - Ajax, The Dutch, the War: Football in Europe during the Second World War[26]
  • 2009 - Soccernomics with Stefan Szymanski.[27] The authors subsequently put forward a formula allowing Kuper to predict that Serbia and Brazil would play the 2010 FIFA World Cup Final.[28]
  • 2011 - The Football Men, a collection of articles about the world of football over 13 years, along with new pieces written for the book.[29]
  • 2021 - Barça: The Rise and Fall of the Club that Built Modern Football. It won the Sunday Times award for Football Book of the Year 2022.[30]
  • 2021 - The Happy Traitor,[31] an account of the life and motivations of George Blake, a British spy for the Soviet Union. The narrative sheds light on Blake's ideological shifts and personal struggles with identity.[32]
  • 2022 - Chums - How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK,[33][34][35][36] about the connections that enabled a university network to dominate Westminster.[33]

Bibliography

[edit]
  • Football Against the Enemy (1994)
  • Ajax, The Dutch, The War: Football in Europe During the Second World War (2003)
  • Soccernomics (Why England Lose: and Other Curious Phenomena Explained)[27]
  • The Football Men: Up Close with the Giants of the Modern Game (2011)
  • Barça: The Rise and Fall of the Club That Built Modern Football (2021)
  • The Happy Traitor: Spies, Lies and Exile in Russia: The Extraordinary Story of George Blake (2021)
  • Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK[33]
  • Good Chaps: How Corrupt Politicians Broke Our Law and Institutions - And What We Can Do About It (2024)
  • Impossible City: Paris in the Twenty-First Century (2025)
  • World Cup Fever: A Footballing Journey in Nine Tournaments (2025)

Personal life

[edit]

Kuper has lived in Jamaica, Sweden, Palo Alto, California, Berlin and London.[citation needed] As of 2026 Kuper lives in Paris with his wife, the American-French author Pamela Druckerman.[37] They have three children. In 2022, he wrote in the Financial Times that he had recently become a naturalised French citizen after living in Paris for more than 20 years.[1]

References

[edit]
  1. 1 2 Kuper, Simon (2022). "Becoming French is like winning the lottery". ft.com. Archived from the original on 11 December 2022. Retrieved 6 August 2022.
  2. 1 2 Kuper, Simon (2026). "The World Cup 2026 — You asked, Simon Kuper answered". ft.com. London. "Fans have no power over them. FIFA is an unaccountable autocratic monopolist (the World Cup is a monopoly) that controls a cashbox that nobody can even look into"
  3. ↑ Simon Kuper at the Muck Rack journalist directory Edit this at Wikidata
  4. 1 2 Larsen, Martin Alfonsin; Holland, Matthew (2023). "In conversation with Simon Kuper". oxfordstudent.com. Oxford: The Oxford Student. Archived from the original on 12 June 2023.
  5. 1 2 Anon (2023). "Full List of Kennedy Scholars - Kennedy Memorial Trust". kennedytrust.org.uk. Archived from the original on 2 July 2023. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  6. 1 2 "Simon Kuper". ft.com. London: Financial Times. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
  7. 1 2 "BSME Awards 2016 – the winners". inpublishing.co.uk. 16 November 2016. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  8. 1 2 "Awards 2020 Winners SLIDES". bsme.com. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  9. ↑ Website Leiden Professors
  10. ↑ Liebson, Jonathan (4 June 2024). "A Living Tableau of Multiculturalism: On Simon Kuper's "Impossible City"". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 7 July 2026.
  11. ↑ Johnson, R.W. "Carry on up the Corner Flag". lrb.co.uk. London Review of Books. Retrieved 11 June 2026.
  12. ↑ Interview, Oxstu Profile (20 October 2025). "Breakfast with Simon Kuper: Journalism and the future of Europe". The Oxford Student. Retrieved 9 August 2026.
  13. ↑ "No Headline Present". heraldscotland.com. Herald Scotland. 5 May 1999. Retrieved 14 December 2014.
  14. ↑ Simon Kuper (5 March 2007). "Hail Holland, world cricket's unlikely lads". Financial Times. Archived from the original on 11 December 2022. Retrieved 13 September 2011.
  15. ↑ Simon Kuper (6 March 2006). "All the time in the world". ESPNcricinfo. Retrieved 13 September 2011.
  16. ↑ Kuper, Simon (18 September 2019). "How Oxford University shaped Brexit — and Britain's next prime minister". Financial Times. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
  17. ↑ Kuper, Simon (16 June 2022). "Western Europe's cynicism about Ukrainian suffering". Financial Times. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  18. ↑ Kuper, Simon (22 September 2022). "Populism isn't over. It's getting an upgrade". Financial Times. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  19. ↑ Kuper, Simon (19 April 2022). "'A nursery of the Commons': how the Oxford Union created today's ruling political class". theguardian.com. The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  20. ↑ Kuper, Simon (11 October 2017). "Dutch stagnation is due to lack of new ideas, new managers at the top". epsn.com. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  21. ↑ Kuper, Simon (29 June 2022). "The conspiracy against women's football". spectator.co.uk. The Spectator. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  22. ↑ Gelder, Machteld van (20 October 2021). "Simon Kuper: 'Ik ben beducht voor mensen die niet kunnen luisteren'". nrc.nl (in Dutch). Retrieved 10 July 2023.
  23. ↑ "Zoekresultaten voor simon kuper | Zoeken | Het Financieele Dagblad". fd.nl. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
  24. ↑ "Simon Kuper - De Correspondent". decorrespondent.nl (in Dutch). Retrieved 10 July 2023.
  25. 1 2 "Football Against The Enemy: the story behind the story | Sporting Intelligence". Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  26. ↑ Ajax, The Dutch, the War: Football in Europe during the Second World War [ISBN missing]
  27. 1 2 Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski (2009) Soccernomics [ISBN missing]
  28. ↑ Lammers, Coen (2010). "Formula predicts who will win". stuff.co.nz. Archived from the original on 14 December 2014. Retrieved 14 December 2014.
  29. ↑ "The Football Men, by Simon Kuper". independent.co.uk. The Independent. 11 June 2011. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  30. ↑ "sportsbookaward/status/1529934066241486870". Twitter. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
  31. ↑ Lipman, Maria (20 April 2021). "The Happy Traitor: Spies, Lies, and Exile in Russia; The Extraordinary Story of George Blake". Foreign Affairs. No. May/June 2021. ISSN 0015-7120. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  32. ↑ Norton-Taylor, Richard (20 March 2021). "The Happy Traitor by Simon Kuper review – the extraordinary story of George Blake". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  33. 1 2 3 Moravcsik, Andrew (1 November 2022). "Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK". Foreign Affairs. No. November/December 2022. ISSN 0015-7120. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  34. ↑ Deng, Yii-Jeng (21 May 2022). "Book Review: Chums by Simon Kuper". oxfordstudent.com. The Oxford Student.
  35. ↑ Adams, Tim (1 May 2022). "Review of Chums by Simon Kuper". The Guardian.
  36. ↑ Roy, Amit (30 September 2022). "Special set (review of Chums)". telegraphindia.com. The Telegraph, India.
  37. ↑ Shea, Christopher (16 February 2012). "The Bébé's Dad Speaks". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
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