Jason Cowley is a journalist, magazine editor and writer.

He has been editor-in-chief of The New Statesman (founded in 1913 as a weekly review of politics and literature) since autumn 2008 and is widely credited with transforming its fortunes as a print and digital publication.

He is a former editor of Granta magazine and worked in staff roles at the Times and the Observer.

According to the European Press Prize, “Cowley has succeeded in revitalising the New Statesman and re-establishing its position as an influential political and cultural weekly. He has given it an edge and a relevance to current affairs it hasn’t had for years.”

In 2019 he was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Journalism and in 2020 he was voted Editor of the Year, Politics and Current Affairs, for the fourth time at the British Society of Magazine Editors awards.

He is the author of a memoir, The Last Game (Simon & Schuster, 2009), and Reaching for Utopia (Salt Publishing, 2018), a book of essays.

In 2019, he edited and wrote the introduction to Statesmanship: The Best of the New Statesman, 1913-2019 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson; a revised and updated paperback edition was published the following year).

His introduction to the Macmillan Collector’s Library edition of George Orwell’s Animal Farm was published in 2021.

In 2023 he was chair of the judges of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction’s 25th anniversary Winner of Winners Award.

He is a trustee of The Fry Art Gallery in Saffron Walden, Essex.

His most recent book, Who Are We Now? Stories of Modern England (Picador), was published on 31 March 2022; the paperback edition in March 2023.

He is working on a short book about Clement Attlee.

CONTACT: He can be contacted by email at jcowley@newstatesman.co.uk