Duncan Campbell (born 1944)[2] is a British journalist and author who has worked particularly on crime issues. He was a senior reporter/correspondent for The Guardian from 1987 until 2010. He is also the author of several books.
Campbell is married to the British actress Julie Christie; they have lived together since 1979,[3] but the date they married is not clear. In January 2008, several news outlets reported that the couple had quietly married in India in November 2007,[4][5] which Christie called "nonsense", adding: "I have been married for a few years. Don't believe what you read in the papers."[6]
Campbell was a copywriter for advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather before he quit in 1971, aged 26, to visit India, and pursue an ambition to become a journalist. Decades later, he turned the experience of the trip into his first novel, The Paradise Trail.[7]
In June 2009, it was announced by The Guardian that Campbell would take voluntary redundancy[9] and he now works as a freelance writer, including for The Guardian.[8]
Campbell is a former chair of the Crime Reporters' Association, for four years in the 1990s,[10] and winner of the Bar Council Legal Reporting Award for Newspaper Journalist of the Year in 1992.[11][12][13]
Campbell is the author of two novels, the first of which, The Paradise Trail, was published in 2008. Set largely in India in 1971, it is partly a murder mystery and partly an affectionate depiction of life on the "hippie trail": the cheap hotels and eating places, the music, the drug-fuelled conversations. According to the reviewer for the Socialist Review: "One impressive aspect of this book is the almost seamless blending of quite mundane events such as cricket matches with serious issues like imperialism, British and Indian politics, and death. Campbell makes important points through his characters without rendering them ridiculous – no mean feat considering the main characters are permanently stoned hippies and a frustrated hotelier. One of the reviews on the back of the book described it as 'a great beach read', but I'd go further than that – it's a great read whether you're on a beach or not."[14] According to The Independent: "Duncan Campbell skilfully traces how the paradise trail upon which these naive hopefuls stumble leads painfully back to the very selves they had hoped to flee."[15]
Campbell's second novel was If It Bleeds (2009), which one reviewer summed up by saying: "What you've got here is a cracking good yarn, told with verve and humour. Can we have a follow-up?"[16]
Campbell has written several nonfiction books, including a history of British crime from the 1930s to the 1990s (The Underworld, 1994 — based on the BBC television series) and That Was Business, This Is Personal (1990 — a series of interviews with criminals and those who pursue them). A Stranger and Afraid (1997) covers the story of Caroline Beale.[17]
Campbell's 2016 book We'll All Be Murdered In Our Beds draws on his many years as a crime correspondent.[18][19][20] The Evening Standard wrote about it: "A strong sense of nostalgia runs throughout this zany catalogue of atrocity and achievement",[21] while The Guardian reviewer called the book "by turns amusing, engaging, horrifying and, yes, thoughtful. It is not merely a catalogue of the goriest and most notorious crimes, but a fascinating description of the often corrupt relationship between Fleet Street's finest and the police."[22]
Campbell's 2019 book, The Underworld: The inside story of Britain’s professional and organised crime, was a Sunday Times Bestseller.[23]
We'll All Be Murdered In Our Beds: The Shocking History of Crime Reporting in Britain (Elliott & Thompson, 2016), ISBN978-1783961337
The Underworld: The inside story of Britain's professional and organised crime (Ebury, National Geographic Books, Amazon, 2019) ISBN1529103657, ISBN9781529103656
