Stephen Bates read Modern History at New College, Oxford before working as a journalist for the BBC, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and, for 22 years, The Guardian, successively there as a political correspondent, European Affairs Editor in Brussels and religious and royal correspondent. A regular broadcaster, he has also written for The Spectator, New Statesman, Time magazine, Literary Review, Tablet and BBC History Magazine, Le Monde and Berliner Zeitung. He is married with three adult children and lives in Kent.
