Christopher John Penrice Booker (born
October 7,
1937) is an
English journalist and
author.
Booker was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford, Shrewsbury School, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he read History. His parents founded the elite girls school Knighton House.
He was briefly married to the novelist Emma Tennant and to Christine Verity, who later married historian Norman Stone. In 1979, he married Valerie Patrick, with whom he has two sons; they live in Somerset.
With fellow Salopians Richard Ingrams and Willie Rushton he founded Private Eye in 1961, and was its first editor. He was ousted by Ingrams in 1963. Returning in 1965, he has remained a member of the magazine’s collaborative joke-writing team ever since (with Ingrams, Barry Fantoni and current editor Ian Hislop).
