Rachel Johnson



Profile:
Full name: Rachel Johnson

Area of interest: families, parenting and lifestyle issues

Journals/Organisation: Daily Mail

Email: Rachel Johnson

Personal website: http://www.racheljohnson.co.uk

Website: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/columnists/columnist-1033629/Rachel-Johnson.html

Blog: http://rachelsjohnson.blogspot.com

Representation:

Networks: http://twitter.com/#!/RachelSJohnson



Biography:
About:

Education: New College, Oxford: Classics

Career: Joined Financial Times as graduate trainee (FT's first female graduate trainee), 1989; moved to the BBC in 1994; became freelance in 1996. Written weekly columns for the Sunday Telegraph, the Daily Telegraph, the Evening Standard and regular columns for the Financial Times and Easy Living magazine; contributing editor of the Spectator as well as weekly Sunday Times columnist until 2009; editor of The Lady, 2009/2011

Current position/role: Editor-in-chief of The Lady


 * also writes/written for: occasional contributions to The Times

Other roles/Main role:

Other activities:

Disclosures: Viewpoints/Insight:
 * The Lady and the revamp - She’s got the charm and the contacts. Can Boris Johnson’s feisty little sister give the sedate, genteel magazine The Lady its long-overdue makeover without lowering the tone? - Leslie White, The Sunday Times, 24th January 2010
 * Life as a serial offender - The Daily Telegraph, 8th November 2004
 * Shire Hell by Rachel Johnson - Who needs enemies when you've got friends like Rachel Johnson? In Shire Hell, her follow-up to Notting Hell, she chronicles her life in the country lane, boldly featuring real-life characters such as Taki, Sarah Raven, the Bodens and the Bamfords, not to mention others who can't fail to recognise themselves, despite not being named - Katie Law, Evening Standard, 14th May 2008
 * For a journalist writing about Rachel Johnson, this was the Holy Grail - Toby Young, Tatler magazine, May 2008

Broadcast media:

Video:

Controversy/Criticism: No Way To Treat The Lady, Julia Budworth, whose family owns The Lady magazine, reveals what she really thinks of controversial new editor Rachel Johnson, The Daily Telegraph, 30th September 2010 (see Links below)

Awards/Honours:

Scoops:

Other: Younger sister of Boris Johnson; married to Ivo Dawnay, communications director of the National Trust



Books & Debate:

 * The Mummy Diaries, 2005 ISBN 0141020598
 * Notting Hell, 2007 ISBN 0141020830
 * Shire hell, 2008 OCLC 244651935
 * A diary of the lady: my first year as editor, 2010 OCLC640085412

Latest work: Winter games OCLC80063930 Fig Tree, 2012. Reviewed here by Jenny Colgan

Speaking/Appearances: http://www.racheljohnson.co.uk

Debate: 

All Journals:
No regular column



Articles:

 * Why return a call when you can return serve? - David Cameron deserves our admiration if he really did put Barack Obama on hold while he played tennis - 28th September 2012
 * Kate Middleton: the French will never spare a girl her blushes - The Duchess of Cambridge was caught out by France's favourite summer sport - 14th September 2012
 * An Englishman's love of animals surpasses all others - Many Englishmen reserve their deepest feelings for dumb beasts - 20th July 2012
 * Send more euros? Sorry, darling, I can’t quite hear you - It's too easy for our offspring to contact us when they're abroad - 12th July 2012
 * Girls today are so glamorous, but there’s a price to be paid - We all enjoy looking at beautiful young things, but many costly decades 'maintenance' lie ahead for them - 4th July 2012



Sunday Times:

 * column ended July 2009

Column name:

Remit/Info:

Section: Features / News review

Role: Columnist

Pen-name:

Email: rachel.johnson@sunday-times.co.uk

Personal website:

Website: TimesOnline

Commissioning editor:

Day published: Sunday

Regularity: Weekly

Column format:

Average length: 1100 words



Articles:
archive (search result)



Evening Standard:
Column name:

Remit/Info:

Section: Features / News review

Role: Columnist

Pen-name:

Email:

Personal website:

Website: Standard.co / Rachel Johnson

Commissioning editor:

Day published:

Regularity: weekly

Column format:

Average length:



Articles: 2009

 * Thanks to BBC2, I’ve caught negorrhea - Just managed to catch Nicholas Hytner's staging of The Magic Flute at the Coliseum, thanks to nice friends offering two spare tickets. After champagne in the crush bar, I was more than ready to be transported by Mozart's Singspiel, and settled into the stalls with a spoiling sense of anticipation. And then - I feel such an ingrate - followed three hours of assault on the faculties - 5th March 2009
 * Just keep us out of your memoirs, Ken - I'll do anything for a free croissant, so when Sky News asked me to do the paper review on Sunday, I said yes like a shot - 26th February 2009
 * My poster girl for the credit crunch - There's no female face of the recession, we are told. Well, there is now, following Tuesday's premiere of the film of Sophie Kinsella's bestselling novels, Confessions of a Shopaholic, my first pick of the half-term week19th February 2009
 * Sweet charity – it’s all the rage at last - Do charities really need their own bail-out? Everyone I know is lit from within and bubbling over about their own projects — and they’re all either charitable or voluntary - 12th February 2009
 * So long snow – we are off to the piste - I can highly recommend City Airport on a Sunday. We passed through on our way to Geneva feeling very smug. London last weekend — if you can remember that far back — was wintry grey, and we were en route to the slopes, na na na na na! — where the conditions were apparently legend - 5th February 2009
 * A very British walk through the world - It was 250 years ago this month that the British Museum opened its doors - 29th January 2009
 * Vince, you are a prince of a politician - At the Electric Cinema, where Matthew Freud and Elisabeth Murdoch had invited le tout Notting Hill to watch Barack Obama's inauguration on the big screen, everyone started chattering when the poet came on - 22nd January 2009
 * All one-man bands in the gig economy - Tina Brown reveals her thinking on the downturn and decides we are in a new "gig" economy. "Now that everyone has a project-to-project freelance career," she asserts in her website, The Daily Beast, "everyone is a hustler." - 15th January 2009
 * Be warned, I'm not in surly city mode - Big news! A Patisserie Valerie has opened on Holland Park Avenue, even though this run of shops is already over-endowed with that ilk - Starbucks, Maison Blanc and Paul are all within a scone's throw - 8th January 2009



News & updates:

 * Rachel Johnson becomes Change UK candidate for European poll - Sister of Boris stands for pro-EU centrist party to overturn Brexit Financial Times, 23rd April 2019
 * 'The "Boris's sister" thing pisses me off' The journalist and writer on editing The Lady, her new novel, and why she hates being accused of nepotism. Interview by Elizabeth Day. The Guardian, 11th November 2012
 * As Boris Johnson's sister is replaced by a MALE editor, The Lady magazine's matriarch renews their bitter feud - MailOnline, 11th December 2011
 * 'Rachel Johnson quits the Lady after three years' - Johnson departs after an eventful spell which included overseeing a successful redesign and clashes with the proprietor - The Guardian, 20th November 2012



References:


Links:

 * Wikipedia biog.
 * Rachel Johnson: the iron lady, interviewed by Zoe Williams, The Guardian, 1st October 2010