James Heartfield (born 1961) is a British historian and a lecturer.

Life

Born in

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by popula ...

, 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 The University of Westminster is a public university, public university based in London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1838 as the Royal Polytechnic Institution, it was the first Polytechnic (United Kingdom), polytechnic to open in London. The Polyte ...

) was published as ''The European Union and the End of Politics,'' in 2013. Heartfield has written for ''

ArtReview ''ArtReview'' is an international contemporary art magazine based in London, founded in 1948. Its sister publication, ''ArtReview Asia'', was established in 2013. History Launched as a fortnightly broadsheet in February 1949 by a retired country ...

'', ''

Blueprint A blueprint is a reproduction of a technical drawing or engineering drawing using a contact print process on light-sensitive sheets. Introduced by Sir John Herschel in 1842, the process allowed rapid and accurate production of an unlimited number ...

'',

Spiked Online ''Spiked'' (also written as ''sp!ked'') is a British Internet magazine focusing on politics, culture and society. The magazine was founded in 2001 with the same editor and many of the same contributors as ''Living Marxism'', which had closed i ...

, and the ''Times Education Supplement''. In May 2006, with Julia Svetlichnaja, he interviewed the Russian dissident

Alexander Litvinenko Alexander Valterovich "Sasha" Litvinenko (30 August 1962 ( at WebCite) or 4 December 1962 – 23 November 2006) was a British-naturalised Russian defector and former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) who specialised ...

. 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 Reform UK is a right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. It was founded with support from Nigel Farage in November 2018 as the Brexit Party, advocating hard Euroscepticism and a no-deal Brexit, and was briefly a significant ...

in the

2019 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom The 2019 European Parliament election was the United Kingdom's component of the 2019 European Parliament election, held on Thursday 23 May 2019 and the results were announced on Sunday 26 and Monday 27 May 2019, after all the other EU countri ...

for Yorkshire and the Humber but did not gain a seat.

Personal life

He lives in north

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

and is married with two daughters.

Publications

* ''Britain's Empires: A History, 1600-2020'' London, Anthem Press, 2022 * ''The Blood-Stained Poppy: A critique of the politics of commemoration'' London, Zer0 Books, 2019 * ''The Equal Opportunities Revolution'' London,

Repeater Books Repeater Books is a publishing imprint based in London, founded in 2014 by Tariq Goddard and Mark Fisher, formerly the founders of radical publishers Zero Books, along with Etan Ilfeld, Tamar Shlaim, Alex Niven and Matteo Mandarini. Formation ...

, 2017 * ''The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society'' London Hurst Books/Oxford University Press, 2016 * ''Who's Afraid of the Easter Rising?'' (with Kevin Rooney), London Zer0, Books, 2015 * ''The European Union and the End of Politics'' London, Zer0 Books, 2013 * ''British Workers & the US Civil War'' London, Reverspective, 2013 * ''Unpatriotic History of the Second World War'' London, Zer0 Books, 2012 * ''The Aborigines' Protection Society: Humanitarian Imperialism in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Canada, South Africa, and the Congo, 1836-1909'' Hurst (London), and Columbia University Press (New York), 2011 * ''Green Capitalism: manufacturing scarcity in an age of abundance'', Openmute, 2008 * ''Let's Build! Why we need Five Million Homes in the next 10 Years'' (Audacity, 2006)
''Escape the Creative Ghetto,''
with Chris Powell, NESTA, 2006
''Creativity Gap''
Blueprint, 2005 * ''The "Death of the Subject" Explained'' Sheffield Hallam University Press, 2002Review of ''The "Death of the Subject" Explained'': *Munira Mirza, ''International Journal of Cultural Policy'', * ''Great Expectations: the creative industries in the New Economy'' London, Design Agenda, 2000 * ''Need and Desire in the Post-material Economy'' Sheffield Hallam University Press, 1998 * ''Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age''co-editor with Ian Abley, London, John Wiley, 2002.

References

External links

James Heartfield's home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Heartfield, James 1961 births British male journalists Living people

British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...

Historians of colonialism Revolutionary Communist Party (UK, 1978) members Brexit Party politicians Date of birth missing (living people)