Damian Thompson

Damian Thompson (born 1962) is an English journalist, editor and author.

He is an associate editor of The Spectator.

Previously he worked as editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald and for The Daily Telegraph where he was religious affairs correspondent and later blogs editor and a Saturday columnist.

Thompson was educated at Presentation College, Reading (later known as the Elvian School), and read history at Mansfield College, Oxford.

He was religious affairs correspondent of The Daily Telegraph from 1990 to 1994, and subsequently editor-in chief of the Catholic Herald. He was a director of the Herald from 2003 to 2019.

In 2003, he received his Ph.D in the sociology of religion from the London School of Economics for his thesis, The problem of the end: a sociological study of the management of apocalyptic belief at Kensington Temple, a London Pentecostal church, at the end of the millennium.

Thompson was a Saturday columnist for The Daily Telegraph from 2011, and the Blogs Editor of the Telegraph Media Group, with responsibility for editing and commissioning blogs on politics, religion, finance and culture.

His book The Fix: How Addiction is Invading our Lives and Taking Over Your World was published in 2012.

He writes a monthly column about classical music for The Spectator.

In June 2014, he left his posts at The Telegraph "in entirely amicable circumstances".

On 5 August 2014, The Spectator announced that Thompson had been appointed associate editor.

He has written two books about apocalyptic belief and one about conspiracy theories or "counterknowledge", which he describes as "misinformation packaged to look like fact".