Daniel Johnson is the son of the author
Paul Johnson and brother of Cosmos Johnson, Sophie Johnson-Clark and entrepreneur
Luke Johnson. After attending
Langley Grammar School he graduated with a
First in Modern History from
Magdalen College, Oxford, and then studied at
Peterhouse, Cambridge for three years from 1978 to 1981. Johnson was awarded a Shakespeare Scholarship to Berlin. Returning to English academia as a fellow of
Queen Mary, University of London, he served as Director of Publications for the
Centre for Policy Studies. Johnson covered the
fall of the Berlin Wall as German correspondent for
The Daily Telegraph and has worked as a
leader writer for both
The Times and
The Telegraph, as well as
literary editor and
associate editor for
The Times. On 9 November 1989, Johnson attended an East German Government press conference on loosening of travel restrictions for East Germans, and asked the final question: "What will happen to the
Berlin Wall now?" His question and
Günter Schabowski's response is shown nightly in a video displayed every evening to tourists at the
Deutsche Bundestag building in Berlin. In 2008, he launched
Standpoint magazine as founding editor. He stepped down in December 2018. He was also a
contributing editor to
The New York Sun and a contributor to
The Times Literary Supplement,
The Literary Review,
Prospect,
Commentary, and
The New Criterion, as well as
The American Spectator and
The Weekly Standard. Allegations were published in the January 9, 2008 issue of
The New York Sun, written by Johnson about then-presidential candidate
Barack Obama and Kenya's candidate (and subsequent Prime Minister)
Raila Odinga, based on what was later described as "a patently fallacious story ...
The Sun is attempting to get away with lies about the Democratic presidential candidate, or at the very least to shirk their responsibility to the truth." In 2018, Johnson became the founding editor of a new political opinion website,
TheArticle. In 2013, he participated in an
Oxford Union debate arguing that
Islam is not a
religion of peace. He has been criticised for writing in
Standpoint in 2015 that "the Islamisation of Europe is no longer a far-right fantasy, but a real possibility", and that an increase in the number of Muslims could create "a new European hell". He is Catholic and is married with four children. ==Bibliography==