James Heartfield facts for kids
James Heartfield (born 1961) is a British historian and a lecturer.
Life
Born in Leeds, Heartfield has written a number of books on the history of the British Empire, including The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (2016) and The Blood-Stained Poppy: A critique of the politics of commemoration (2019). His Ph.D. thesis (awarded by the University of Westminster) was published as The European Union and the End of Politics, in 2013. Heartfield has written for ArtReview, Blueprint, Spiked Online, and the Times Education Supplement. In May 2006, with Julia Svetlichnaja, he interviewed the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko. In the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020, Heartfield worked as a vaccinator at Guy's and St Thomas's Hospital.
Politics
He has been critical of government policies on the creative industries, talking and writing on the illusions of the knowledge economy, and was active in the 'Design Agenda' group, campaigning for a realistic assessment of the Creative Industries, speaking at their 1998 conference on 'rebranding Britain' in 1998. Nick Bell named Heartfield as "one of the most important commentators on design". Heartfield was a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party in the 1980s. In 2002 he helped set up the Audacity campaign for more house-building. Heartfield stood as a candidate for the Brexit Party in the 2019 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom for Yorkshire and the Humber but did not gain a seat.
Personal life
He lives in north London and is married with two daughters.
