John O’Sullivan to edit Quadrant in 2015 and 2016

I am pleased to announce that the distinguished British journalist John O’Sullivan will be editor of Quadrant for the next two years. John is one of international journalism’s most experienced editors, having spent nearly a decade in New York as editor of National Review, and in Washington DC with the Nixon Center where he edited National Interest and the Heritage Foundation where he edited Policy Review. Most recently he lived in Budapest as director of the Danube Institute and associate editor of the Hungarian Review.

From 2001 to 2003 he was editor-in-chief of United Press International and from 2008 to 2011 executive editor of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty in Prague. He remains editor-at-large and a frequent contributor to National Review. From 1998 to 2001 he was an editorial consultant to Hollinger International Inc and a leading member of the journalistic team that created the National Post, Canada’s first national newspaper. In the 1980s he was editorial page and op-ed editor of both the New York Post and the London Times.

John’s book The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister (2006) on the central roles played by Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the collapse of communism and the revival of Western market democracies, has been published in English, Portuguese, Spanish, Czech, Polish, Italian and Hungarian.

In 1987–88 he served as a Special Adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street. During this period and after he left Downing Street, he served informally as a regular speech-writer for the Prime Minister. Later he was one of the small team that assisted Lady Thatcher in the writing of her two volumes of memoirs.

In 1996 he was the founder and co-chairman of the New Atlantic Initiative, an international bipartisan effort dedicated to reinvigorating and expanding the Atlantic community of democracies. Launched by Czech President Vaclav Havel and Lady Thatcher, the NAI played a major role in bringing the countries of central and eastern Europe into NATO.

During John’s tenure as editor, I am stepping down as editor of Quadrant magazine but taking up two new positions, one as chair of the board of Quadrant Magazine Ltd, the other as editor-in-chief, with a general oversight of the magazine and of Quadrant Online and Quadrant Books.

Elizabeth Prior Jonson, who has been chair of the board of Quadrant Magazine Ltd for the past seventeen years, has stepped down from that position. I want to take this opportunity to publicly acknowledge how valuable has been her service to the organisation. She became chair at a precarious moment in the magazine’s life in late 1997, when former editor Robert Manne had abruptly resigned and new editor Paddy McGuinness was picking up the pieces and arranging to move the office from Melbourne back to Sydney. Since then, under her chairmanship, the publication has not only survived but gone from strength to strength. During my seven years as editor, her support was unfaltering and her counsel invaluable. Fortunately for the organisation, she will stay on as a member of the board.