William Nicolas Hutton (born 21 May 1950) is a British journalist. As of 2022, he writes a regular column for The Observer, co-chairs the Purposeful Company, and is the president-designate of the Academy of Social Sciences. He is the chair of the advisory board of the UK National Youth Corps. He was principal of Hertford College, University of Oxford from 2011 to 2020, and co-founder of the Big Innovation Centre,[1] an initiative from the Work Foundation (formerly the Industrial Society), having been chief executive of the Work Foundation from 2000 to 2008. He was formerly editor-in-chiefofThe Observer.
Hutton studied at Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar SchoolinSidcup, where he was introduced to A level economics by a teacher, Garth Pinkney. He only got average marks at O-level but enjoyed the sixth form more, studying geography, history, and economics. He also organised the school tennis team. After studying sociology and economics at the University of Bristol,[3] gaining a BSocSc (2.1), he started his career as an equity salesman for a brokerage firm, before leaving to study for an MBA at INSEADatFontainebleau near Paris.[citation needed]
Hutton moved on to work in television and radio. He spent ten years with the BBC, including working as economics correspondent for Newsnight from 1983 to 1988, where he replaced Peter Hobday.[4] He spent four years as editor-in-chief at The Observer and director of the Guardian National Newspapers, before joining the Industrial Society, now known as The Work Foundation, as chief executive in 2000. In 2010, he was criticised for his handling of the Industrial Society by a number of publications, including The Sunday Times and Private Eye, for having used the company for campaigning purposes rather than focusing on it as a business enterprise. Under Hutton's management, The Work Foundation became insolvent and was wound up. It was then sold to Lancaster University.[5]
As an author, Hutton's best-known and most influential works are The State We're In (an economic and political look at Britain in the 1990s from a social democratic point of view) and The World We're In, in which he expands his focus to include the relationship between the United States and Europe, emphasising cultural and social differences between the two blocs and analysing the UK as sitting between the two.[10]InThe World We're In, Hutton argues that many viewpoints in this book are neo-Keynesian and that it is critical of short-termism, viewing stakeholder capitalism as an alternative.[11]
Hutton's book The Writing on the Wall was released in the UK in January 2007. The book examines Western concerns and responses to the rise of China and the emerging global division of labour, and argues that the Chinese economy is running up against a set of increasingly unsustainable contradictions that could have a damaging universal fallout. On 18 February 2007, Hutton was a featured guest on BBC's Have Your Say programme, discussing the implications of China's growth. The analysis in his books is characterised by a support for the European Union and its potential, alongside a disdain for what he calls American conservatism —defined, among other factors, as a certain attitude to markets, property, and the social contract. In 1992, he won the What the Papers Say award for Political Journalist of the Year. In 2003, he was made an honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD) by the University of Bristol.
In 2010, he published Them and Us: Changing Britain – Why We Need a Fair Society.
His latest book, How Good We Can Be: Ending the Mercenary Society and Building a Great Country, was published in 2015.[citation needed]
Hutton married Jane Atkinson, the daughter of a neurosurgeon, in 1978, and lives in London. They have two daughters and a son. His wife, who died in 2016, was a director of a property development company called First Premise, based in Richmond upon Thames, which she founded in 1987. Hutton calls himself an agnostic.[12]
Hutton, Will (1997). "The Scene Shifts, the Legacy Remains". In Goodman, Geoffrey (ed.). The State of the Nation: The Political Legacy of Aneurin Bevan. London: Gollancz. pp. 226–232. ISBN0-575-06308-4.
