Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn (born December 8, 1959) is a Canadian author and a radio and television presenter.

He has written several books, including The New York Times bestsellers America Alone, After America, and Broadway Babies Say Goodnight.

In the US he has guest-hosted the nationally syndicated Rush Limbaugh Show, as well as Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News, on which he regularly appeared as a guest and fill-in host.

In 2021, Steyn began hosting his own show on British news channel GB News.

He left GB News in early February 2023, saying that the channel wanted him to pay fines issued by the UK media regulator Ofcom, which was investigating complaints of COVID-19 vaccination scepticism aired on The Mark Steyn Show.

He has since moved his show to his own website.

Steyn was baptized a Catholic and was later confirmed in the Anglican Church, which he left to become a Baptist.

He has stated that "the last Jewish female in my line was one of my paternal great-grandmothers" and that "both my grandmothers were Catholic".

His parents were married in Elliot Lake, Ontario.

Steyn's great-aunt was artist Stella Steyn.

His mother's family was Belgian.

Steyn was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, in the United Kingdom, the same school that author J.R.R. Tolkien attended and where Steyn was assigned a Greek dictionary that had also been used by Tolkien.

Steyn worked as a disc jockey before becoming musical theatre critic at the newly established The Independent in 1986.

He acted as TV critic for Channel 4's breakfast show The Channel 4 Daily and was appointed film critic for The Spectator in 1992.

Although it was reported by The Age in 2006 that Steyn had left school at age 16, his name appears in the King Edward's School yearbook for 1977-78 as a member of "Cl.VI", that is, the "Classics [Upper] 6th form", which is the normal final year for students at that school.

After writing predominantly about the arts, Steyn shifted his focus to political commentary and wrote a column for The Daily Telegraph, a conservative broadsheet, until 2006.

He has written for many publications, including The Washington Post, The Jerusalem Post, Orange County Register, Chicago Sun-Times, National Review, The New York Sun, The Australian, Maclean's, The Irish Times, National Post, The Atlantic, Western Standard, and The New Criterion.

He subsequently stepped back from writing and now devotes most of his time to his show.

Steyn's books include Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now, a history of the musical theatre, and the political America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, a New York Times bestseller which predicts the downfall of the West.

He has also published collections of his columns and celebrity obituaries, as well as profiles from The Atlantic.

As of 2010, Steyn was no longer the back-page columnist for the print edition of National Review, conservative writer James Lileks having taken over that space.

Steyn's back-page column for National Review, "Happy Warriors", resumed with the issue of March 21, 2011.

Steyn has contributed to the blog Ricochet.com and recorded numerous podcasts with the organization.

Steyn frequently guest-hosted The Rush Limbaugh Show.

Steyn held a Eugene C. Pulliam Visiting Fellowship in Journalism at Hillsdale College in spring 2013.

From December 2016 to February 2017, Steyn hosted The Mark Steyn Show on the CRTV Digital Network.

CRTV abruptly cancelled the show after two months and went to arbitration, with both sides claiming breach of contract.

Steyn also sued to keep the show on the air during arbitration, saying it was on behalf of his employees.

Former show supervisor Mike Young called this "bullshit" when quoted in The Daily Beast.

Former employees provided sworn declarations that Steyn was "incredibly disorganised", tyrannical, and impossible to work with.

Steyn was awarded damages for breach of contract, which was confirmed on appeal, as well as attorneys' fees.

In October 2021, Steyn began covering for Nigel Farage on his prime time show Farage on GB News on Fridays and was a relief presenter for Farage on other days.

On November 19, 2021, Steyn received a permanent prime time host billing on GB News, with the Friday show renamed Mark Steyn.

In January 2022, the show began airing five nights a week, Monday to Friday, which in February was reduced to Monday to Thursday.

In March 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Steyn presented the show from Western Ukraine.

In December 2022, Steyn suffered a heart attack while broadcasting the Mark Steyn Show on GB News TV.

He did not recognise the symptoms as a heart attack, but later suffered a second, while in France, where he was hospitalised.

Steyn quit GB News in February 2023, in protest at the channel wanting to change his contract to make him personally liable for any fines issued by the UK's media regulator Ofcom, which was then investigating 411 complaints from viewers about Covid vaccine scepticism aired on Steyn's show, in potential breach of the Broadcasting Code.

Steyn also complained changes in his contract would force him and his staff to attend regulatory compliance training sessions, which he referred to as "re-education classes".

On 6 March 2023, Steyn was found by Ofcom to have breached its rules during a GB News programme about COVID-19 vaccines.