Peter Jukes

Peter is a dramatist, screenwriter, critic and journalist and is a regular London correspondent for Newsweek and The Daily Beast.

Peter was an entrance and foundation scholar at Queens’ College, Cambridge where he gained a double first in English Literature and wrote for contemporaries such as Tilda Swinton, Simon Russell Beale and Joanna Scanlan, and was awarded the RSC Best Director award. He worked as a producer in the BBC Radio Drama Department, won an Edinburgh Fringe First for his fringe plays, and wrote the book for the Olivier award-winning West End musical, MATADOR.

His television credits include, The Chief, Call Red, 99-1, Holby City and The Inspector Lynley Mysteries. He wrote the opening episode of the Emmy award winning BBC1 Drama, Waking the Dead, redevising the Bafta award winning Sea of Souls as well as devising and writing most of the three series of In Deep, which was then developed for the US by Oscar winning writer/director Paul Haggis. On Radio he has written nearly twenty dramas, including two series of Bad Faithstarring Lenny Henry, which was nominated for the best drama award from the Writers Guild.

As an online commentator he is a regular on LabourList and the US site DailyKos writing about a variety of subjects, and he co-founded the US Blog, Motley Moose. His non fiction work includes feature writing for Prospect Magazine, The New Statesman and The Independent, and A Shout in the Street, published by Faber and Faber in the UK and FSG in the USA, called ‘a dream of a book’ by John Berger.Peter’s most recent publication is The Fall of the House of Murdoch, published by Unbound

“Lucid, forceful. A roaring great read. I am most impressed by the way he grasps the central truth of the incapacity of our institutions to cope with Murdoch. The Fall of the House of Murdoch is an impressive accomplishment for its narrative energy, wit and intellectual range.” Sir Harold Evans, former editor of the Sunday Times  “Political thrillers don’t come much better than this’ Chris Bryant MP. “An impressive treatise on how media, money and power in the past thirty years became so locked into mutually supporting agendas that they failed to interrogate each other.” Joy Lo Dico, London Evening Standard