In 1989, Clark won
The Spectator Young Writers Award, part of the prize for which – a lunch — he later claimed not to have received. He established himself as a
freelance journalist, with his work appearing in
The Daily Telegraph and
Sunday Telegraph, the
Daily Express, the
Daily Mail and
The Mail on Sunday and
The Times, where he frequently writes the Thunderer column. His work is strongly associated with
libertarianism and
free market economics, writing the "Banned Wagon" and "Globophobia" columns in
The Spectator. In 2013, he was co-winner of the
Bastiat Prize run by the
Reason Foundation. He was also shortlisted for the prize in 2004. In 2010, shortly before the general election, he co-wrote, with
Neil O'Brien,
The Renewal of Government, the manifesto of
Policy Exchange, a think tank strongly associated with
David Cameron. However, he later showed hostility towards some
Coalition policies; in a piece in
The Times in March 2013, he accused the
Chancellor,
George Osborne, by means of a plan to underwrite £130 billion of mortgage debt, of forcing the taxpayer to take the same speculative risks which had caused the banking crisis. In 2012, Clark's musical
Shot at Dawn was performed as a workshop at the Etcetera Theatre in Camden. The musical was a success and was later restaged as a full-scale professional production in 2014 at
Upstairs at The Gatehouse in
Highgate, north London and the Mumford Theatre,
Cambridge. He also wrote, with Martin Coslett,
The Perfect City, which was performed at the Etcetera Theatre in March 2013. In 2015, the musical
Shot at Dawn was renamed
The White Feather and performed at the Union Theatre in Southwark. ==Personal life==