Michael Gove



Profile:
Full name: Michael Andrew Gove (MP Surrey Heath)

Area of interest: Politics and current affairs

Journals: The Times

Email: [mailto:GOVEM@parliament.uk govem@parliament.uk]

Website: MichaelGoveMP

Blog:

Representation: Capel and Land

Networks:



Biography:
Education: Robert Gordon's College; Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University

Career: The Times in 1995/2005: Leader writer; comment editor, news editor, Saturday editor; assistant editor; also contributed to the Times Literary Supplement, Prospect magazine and The Spectator; worked on BBC's Today programme, On The Record, also Scottish Television and Channel 4 monologue programme A Stab In The Dark; Michael Gove was elected as a Conservative MP in 2005 and was their Shadow Housing Minister, Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, and then Secretary of State for Education from 12th May 2010

Current position/role:


 * also writes/written for:

Other roles:

Other activities:

Disclosures:

Viewpoints/Insight: One of the Signatories of the Statement of Principles of the Henry Jackson Society (info); Tory Diary: On the emergence of an anti-Islamist intelligentsia

TV/Radio:

Video: BBC1 Question Time, 1st June 2006 (video extract); Frequent panelist on BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze and BBC2's Newsnight Review

Controversy/Criticism: Writer and historian William Dalrymple has described Celsius 7/7 as a "confused epic of simplistic incomprehension" and disputed that Gove has any authority to write about Islamic cluture or history - see Michael Gove's response

Awards/Honours: Charles Douglas-Home Prize

Scoops:

Other: Married to Sarah Vine, The Times' Arts Editor; Previous chairman of centre-right think tank Policy Exchange, which was launched in 2002



Books & Debate:

 * Michael Portillo: The Future of the Right - Michael Gove's biography of Michael Portillo, 1995 (ISBN 1857023358) - nb Michael Portillo once predicted that Michael Gove will be the future leader of the Conservatives
 * The Price of Peace* - critical study of the Northern Ireland peace process, 2000 (ISBN 1903219159)
 * A Blue Tomorrow: New Visions from Modern Conservatives, 2001 (ISBN 1842750275)
 * Celsius 7/7 - How the West's policy of appeasement has provoked yet more fundamentalist terror - and what has to be done now, 2006 (ISBN 0297851462)

Latest work: Biography of Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke - Harper Collins

Speaking/Appearances:

Current debate:



The Times:
Column name:

Remit/Info: Politics and current affairs

Section: Features

Role: Commentator

Pen-name:

Email: [mailto:GOVEM@parliament.uk govem@parliament.uk]

Website: TimesOnline

Commissioning editor:

Day published: varies, often Monday

Regularity: Weekly

Column format:

Average length:



Articles:

 * We must teach our children to love books again - The love of reading is being stifled by a constricted exam system and a can't-do culture, argues Education Secretary Michael Gove - 31st March 2011 (writing in The Daily Telegraph)
 * National curriculum review: children failed by Labour's education reforms - When the tide goes out, Warren Buffet once argued, you see who’s been swimming naked. The world’s wisest investor was reflecting on the banking crisis - 20th January 2011 (writing in The Independent)
 * The benchmark for excellence: Can British schools catch up with other nations? - Standards in British schools have slipped dramatically behind those of other nations in the last decade, says Michael Gove. But analysing the reasons provides an exciting opportunity to catch up fast - 6th January 2011 (writing in The Independent)
 * Michael Gove: my revolution for culture in classroom - Why we must raise education standards so children can compete with rest of the world - 28th December 2010 (writing in The Telegraph)
 * ''Let's give every child a chance" - 28th November 2010 (writing in The Express)
 * will give more children a chance'' - New types of schools can educate without the burden of bureaucracy - 2nd September 2010 (writing in The Daily Telegraph)
 * faster — the schools gap must be closed'' - England has one of the most segregated school systems in the world. Of 80,000 pupils eligible for free school meals, just 45 got to Oxbridge - 15th August 2010
 * red is the new black as Labour reverts to its old ways'' - What is striking about today's Labour Party is that it hasn't evolved along the path set by Tony Blair, absorbing its more progressive characteristics and developing them further. Instead, under the guise of "moving on" from Blair, the Labour Party has in fact regressed - 17th March 2010 (writing in The Independent)
 * are still in the shadow of the Holocaust'' - Anti-Semitism is on the rise, which makes memorial day all the more vital - 25th January 2010 (writing in The Daily telegraph)
 * pros and cons of punctuality'' - Sometimes a desire to be polite can have unpleasant consequences - 11th January 2010
 * guide to a simply glorious Christmas'' - In this seasonal rush it is the columnist’s duty to pass on pocket-size and easily unwrapped nuggets of wisdom - 21st December 2009
 * wild horses are dragging me into mid-life'' - The tell-tale signs of impending maturity - 14th December 2009
 * literary feast that I can’t wolf down'' - At least the chattering classes will have something to chunter about - 7th December 2009
 * funds must not be used to propagate an Islamic state'' - Ed Balls is wrong about Hizb-ut-Tahrir's influence on faith schools - 1st December 2009
 * and me — driving into trouble'' - Nothing in my life is as fraught as easing my Skoda into a car park slot - 30th November 2009
 * the waves? Not any more we don’t'' - Lord Palmerston knew how to stand up for the citizens of Britain - 23rd November 2009
 * devil is in the detail for the dark lord'' - Dennis Wheatley's tales are all hokum of course, but it's château-bottled, premier cru St Emilion hokum - 16th November 2009
 * click if you want the bin emptied'' - Notebook: If you give a man a household chore, just leave him to get on with it - 9th November 2009
 * are in thrall to the thrill of novelty'' - Meditations on well-worn quality, cosmetic surgery and foot faults - 3rd November 2009
 * back the clock – my ode to dawn'' - I have to confess that I am firmly in the minority camp on the great question of Greenwich Mean versus British Summer - 26th October 2009
 * at a storm in a tea break'' - There is a horrible sense that public life has become one vast poptastic Smash Hits interview - 19th October 2009
 * is the man of my dreams — and his'' - Catnaps, jackets and worthy tomes at the Times Cheltenham Literature Festival - 12th October 2009
 * perfect – and worn by my hero'' - after watching Sir Cliff being interviewed for an hour by one of the most deftly feline interrogators on TV, I confess that he has now entered my pantheon of heroes - 28th September 2009
 * parents power is the way to better education'' - Leadership, wrote Ed Balls in The Independent this week, is about making the right judgements under pressure. Unfortunately, he is in grave danger of flunking his own test - 25th September 2009 (writing in The Independent)
 * royal life well lived and well captured'' - How sad that human kind cannot bear too much niceness - 21st September 2009
 * me, there is no whimsy in quinsy'' - Maybe there should be a word for the idea that something nasty sounds so nice - 14th September 2009
 * of troops resonates in tales of war'' - Haunted by power of frontline narrative - 17th August 2009
 * lesson in anti-Blairism'' - As Ed Balls outflanks Harman and Mandelson in wooing the Labour - 11th August (writing in The Guardian)
 * Big Brother who watches us now'' - trends pioneered by the show have taken over contemporary life - 10th August 2009
 * of the fittest – ideas, that is'' - Following the eclipse of Miss World as a major media event, the tendency to judge figures aspiring to global prominence on how well they fill swimwear has diminished - 3rd August 2009
 * Fiat 500 is far too exciting a car for driving lessons'' - It’s like ditching Polly Toynbee for La Cicciolina - 28th July 2009
 * a thought: let’s play devil’s advocate'' - Iisn’t it curious that those who affect to despise religion seem so desperate to copy what the religious do? - 20th July 2009
 * bitter a pill for me to swallow'' - Getting old, the perfect job and mobile madness - 13th July 2009
 * where all the women get off'' - Only men really understand railways - 6th July 2009
 * age is the greatest in our history'' - I don’t think there has been a better time in our history. So why, then, the stigma? - 29th June 2009
 * no way to argue with a poptart'' - Some people love arguments that don't rely on reason - 22nd June 2009
 * can I make it clear if I've really got to go?'' - Sometimes it is nature that calls, not the chance of a more interesting conversation - 15th June 2009
 * God's sake! Give Kirstie a break'' - It seems that Channel 4 aspires to be as pure in thought and word as the most austere mother superior - 8th June 2009
 * a thriller and a nice cup of tea'' - I don’t know whether it’s in the Anglo bit, or on the Saxon side, but there’s a chromosome somewhere in the DNA of the British that gives our bodies a very different chemistry from the rest of the world’s - 1st June 2009
 * olde custom: cursing of the SatNav'' - 25th May 2009
 * Mona Lott to Katie Price'' - Denis Healey’s was supposed to be massive, a thing of wonder. Ted Heath had a big one too, by all accounts. But Harold Wilson didn’t seem to have much to boast about. And Margaret Thatcher’s was considered too narrow really to count - 18th May 2009
 * in our reach for higher things'' - Youth may well be wasted on the young. So, in my experience, were libraries - 11th May 2009
 * divisions of the Hitchens brothers'' - There are two types of people in the world. Those who believe in binary divisions and those who don’t - 4th May 2009
 * spent on the highway to hell'' - Is it ever justified to wish evil on someone? I'm afraid, whatever the wisdom of it, I have to confess that my Easter made me an evangelist for evil - 27th April 2009
 * your loaf: the flaccid slice is a horror'' - Eating sliced bread is like dining on tinned pasta, wearing embroidered underwear or drinking wine with two sugars - 6th April 2009
 * true, I once lived off immoral earnings'' - It all happened in the Nineties. And I only did it once. But the memory hangs heavy on my conscience to this day. My specific sin was to profit from someone else's work, by passing it off as my own - 30th March 2009
 * don't get me started on wine aperitifs'' - My hero, Kingsley Amis, once said that the most depressing words in the English language were: “Shall we go straight in?”, closely followed by “red or white?” - 23rd March 2009
 * empire has only one true rival...'' - that is, as I am sure you will have guessed, Star Wars - 16th March 2009
 * to cast light on ‘lost' Dark Ages?'' - it appears that the only difference between the Europe of the Dark Ages and The Fat Duck is that the restaurant is the more dangerous environment of the two - 9th March 2009
 * guilty of a dark prejudice: lawyer-phobia'' - I'm instinctively with Dickens in seeing Chancery, indeed the whole courts system, as a dark, forbidding land - 2nd March 2009
 * week's thin end of the wedge'' - This week is, of course, British Fashion Week. Or as I prefer to think of it, British Famine Week. Or British Body Fascism Week - 23rd February 2009
 * praise of the heroic unsung pedant'' - The roil and swell of popular feeling flings all sort of flotsam and jetsam into our public debate, but the sturdy pedant stands against the swelling tide and erects a little fence of facts - 16th February 2009
 * can't ignore the free market's charms'' - There may be a shortage of debt finance but there's no lack of born-again Marxist newsprint commentary decreeing that we are living through Capitalism's Götterdämmerung - 9th February 2009.
 * bad coffee means good service'' - 2nd February 2009
 * Man is fighting for his survival'' - Just like the climate cataclysm that robbed the dinosaurs of the lush vegetation on which they relied, the credit crunch has deprived Davos Man of the abundant hedge funds, plumply vulnerable family firms and juicy government contracts on which he used to feed - 26th January 2009
 * for the lost world of Loyd'' - After he's reflected, cogitated and digested, Loyd Grossman really only has one option - he should sue - 19th January 2009
 * our writers still need toilet training'' - The debate about what to call the smallest room will thunder on - 12th January 2009
 * delivery is the stuff of sci-fi'' - 22nd December 2008
 * bore's head in hand bear I'' - Free: your indispensable guide to avoiding bores at Christmas parties - 15th December 2008
 * speaking Quango drives you to tears'' - 8th December 2008
 * it's nuclear power to the people'' - Nuclear power has been fêted by a team of our nation's leading intellectuals for displaying contemporary Britain's most desired virtue - keeping it real - 1st December 2008
 * reading for the festive season'' - 24th November 2008
 * CIA's coded humour is all in the name'' - Notebook: the dry humour of the CIA is always evident in the codenames given to President's by the Secret Service - 17th November 2008
 * daughter's worst fear - her parents'' - The profoundest pain I have ever felt is the pain of childhood embarrassment - and now I'm passing it on - 10th November 2008
 * of the pre-1914 world is still felt'' - The shattering of parliamentary Liberalism, the crumbling of faith in what kept us civilised, the ebbing of confidence in old orders - all were casualties of the Great War - 3rd November 2008
 * you're in a hole, don't dig any new ones'' - Notebook: Word of the week, and who knows, perhaps the century to come is, undoubtedly, Keynesian - 27th October 2008
 * eat canapés: 10 more golden rules'' - 20th October 2008
 * me staring stupidly. I've been exposed'' - 13th October 2008
 * latest words for the latest recession'' - 6th October 2008
 * it 'and finally' for local news?'' - I confess. I was a once a reporter for regional television - 29th September 2008
 * happened to the old county distinctions?'' - A strange controversy over ankles; a gripping diary about James Callaghan - 22nd September 2008
 * mystery of the Swedish bookshop'' - People of Viking blood seem to share a passion for murder - 15th September 2008
 * need a Thinker Royal, not a Poet Laureate'' - A philosopher should become our figurehead national intellectual - 8th September 2008
 * to cheat at reading War and Peace'' -Useful advice for those nervous of Tolstoy; an exclusive broadcast from al-Jazeera 2,000 years ago - 1st September 2008
 * on holiday? Learn ‘tourism-speak''' - My phrasebook for the English-speakers holidaying in the UK - 11th August 2008
 * Miliband and the art of criticism'' - 4th August 2008
 * speaks to the brain as well as the heart'' - The Senator writes most of his own speeches, something no president has done effectively since Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt - 28th July 2008
 * old sound bites are the new oratory'' - 21st July 2008
 * are my four columns of wisdom'' - 14th July 2008
 * are a few of my saddest things'' - A4 jotters, postcode boundaries, the list goes on... - 7th July 2008
 * dumb Cowboy Colonels in these memoirs'' - A tradition of condescension towards America has blinded many Britons to the intellectual quality of the US military - 30th June 2008


 * archive



news & updates:


Links:

 * Wikipedia biography
 * It is a school's ethos that matters, interviewed by Benedict Brogan in The Telegraph, 3rd August 2009
 * Hack watch: The security services and Whitehall have long kept dossiers on certain journalists but, characteristically, New Labour has widened the focus - as an internal cabinet memo obtained by the Guardian shows - Seumas Milne, Kevin Maguire, The Guardian, 22nd January 2001