Adam Raphael

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Adam Eliot Geoffrey Raphael (born 22 April 1938) is an English journalist and author. In the

labour conditions in South Africa, and he has also been a presenter of BBC Television's Newsnight. Since 2004, he has edited The Good Hotel Guide. He is not to be confused with a BBC producer of the same name, Adam Jocelyn Raphael (1937–1999).[1]

Early life

Charterhouse School

The son of Geoffrey George Raphael and his wife Nancy Raphael (née Rose), Raphael was educated at two independent schools: Arnold House School in St John's Wood in north-west London, and Charterhouse in Godalming, Surrey (where he was a contemporary of David Dimbleby), followed by Oriel College, Oxford, graduating with a BA with Honours in History.[2]

Career

Raphael undertook

Swindon Evening Advertiser and then on the Bath Evening Chronicle as a reporter and film critic.[2]

In 1965 he arrived in

foreign correspondent
in Washington, D.C., and South Africa from 1969 to 1973. On March 12, 1973, The Guardian published an article headlined: 'British firms pay Africans starvation rate.' It is a result of an investigation by Raphael conducted in South Africa into the employment practices of 100 leading British companies. It found only three (Shell, ICI and Unilever) were paying above the minimum for an African family to avoid malnutrition. Among the companies paying below this minimum were Courtaulds, British Leyland and General Electric. The story led to an immediate pay rise for thousands of African workers and the setting up of a British parliamentary committee. This recommended a code of conduct for British companies operating in South Africa. Raphael was named 'Journalist of the Year' in the National Press Awards that year.

On his return to London from South Africa, he was appointed as The Guardian's consumer affairs columnist from 1974 to 1976, before moving to The Observer as political correspondent, 1976–1981, and then as the political editor, 1981–1986.[2]

In 1984 and 1989, The Observer printed articles by Raphael which suggested that the lobbyist

Ian Greer had been paying members of parliament to table parliamentary questions, an early stage of the Cash for Questions scandal.[4]

In 1987, Raphael briefly moved to BBC Television as a presenter of its daily current affairs programme, Newsnight (1987–1988). He returned to the paper in 1988 as an assistant Editor, and Executive Editor from 1988 to 1993.[2]

In March 1989 The Observer published an article by Raphael which claimed that

House of Commons
denouncing the article. The directors of The Observer dismissed Leigh's complaint, and he resigned from the newspaper in protest.

In 1989, Raphael published a book on some

libel cases, My Learned Friends: an Insider's View of the Jeffrey Archer Case and Other Notorious Actions, which focused on the remarkable case of Jeffrey Archer v. The Daily Star
(1987).

In 1994, he moved to

Market Reduction Approach to theft – designed by Mike Sutton[6]
- and revealed to the wider public the role of stolen goods markets in creating a demand for supply by theft and that the size of the stolen goods economy in Britain was £1.5 billion ($2.4 billion) annually.

In 1994, Raphael's book Ultimate Risk,[7] the story of the Lloyd's of London catastrophe, became a best-seller in the UK. Between 1988 and 1992 Lloyd's recorded losses of some twelve billion US dollars, and Raphael wrote that it thus managed to "pauperize, if not bankrupt, as many as two in five of those who provided the market's capital." Raphael was himself a Lloyd's Name, and was thus able to write as an insider, one of the victims of the affair.[8]

In 1987, Raphael was subpoenaed as a witness by the Daily Star when

Mail on Sunday, Stewart Steven
, for having betrayed Archer as a source. This led to another libel action which ended with the Mail on Sunday paying Raphael £40,000 in costs and damages. Shortly after the Archer trial, Raphael wrote My Learned Friends (1989) in which he alleged that the jury had been misled by Archer’s alibi witnesses. It took another decade for the truth to emerge. In 1999, Raphael wrote an article in The Economist which said that Archer had asked him to change his evidence and that he had lied about where he had been on the night he met Monica. Two years later in 2001 Archer was tried for perjury and jailed for four years.

Raphael has been Editor of The Good Hotel Guide since 2004 and also an Associate Editor of Transport Times since 2005.[2]

Private life

In 1970, Raphael married Caroline Rayner Ellis, and they have one son and one daughter. In

Hurlingham, and the Royal Automobile Club.[2]

Awards

Books

  • My Learned Friends: an Insider's View of the Jeffrey Archer Case and Other Notorious Actions (London, W. H. Allen & Virgin Books, 16 November 1989)[2][10]
  • Ultimate Risk: the inside story of the Lloyd's catastrophe (London, Four Walls Eight Windows, 1994)[2]
  • The Good Hotel Guide 2001: Great Britain and Ireland (with Caroline Raphael) (London, Ebury Press, October 2000)
  • The Good Hotel Guide 2001: Continental Europe (with Caroline Raphael) (London, Ebury Press, February 2001)
  • The Good Hotel Guide 2002: Great Britain and Ireland (with Caroline Raphael) (London, Ebury Press, 6 September 2001)
  • The Good Hotel Guide 2005 (with Caroline Raphael) (London, The Good Hotel Guide Ltd, January 2005)
  • The Good Hotel Guide 2005: Continental Europe (with Caroline Raphael) (London, Steerforth, 15 March 2005)
  • The Good Hotel Guide 2006: Great Britain and Ireland (with Desmond Balmer) (London, Steerforth, 6 December 2005)
  • The Good Hotel Guide 2007 (London, The Good Hotel Guide Ltd, 2006)
  • The Good Hotel Guide 2008 (with Desmond Balmer) (London, The Good Hotel Guide Ltd, 1 October 2007,
    ISBN 978-0-9549404-2-3
    )

References

  1. ^ Alex Kirby Obituary: Adam [Jocelyn] Raphael, The Independent, 14 May 1999
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 'RAPHAEL, Adam Eliot Geoffrey' in Who's Who 2008, retrieved 26 June 2008, from RAPHAEL, Adam Eliot Geoffrey
  3. ^ "No. 41129". The London Gazette (Supplement). 19 July 1957. p. 4292.
  4. ^ The Webs They Weave Archived 20 June 2008 at the Wayback Machine online, accessed 26 June 2008
  5. ^ Raphael, A. (1998) Theft: Sitting on the Fence. The Economist. 23 May. p35.
  6. ^ "Center for Problem Oriented Policing | CPOP Biographies". Archived from the original on 21 June 2010. Retrieved 15 May 2010.
  7. ISBN 978-1-56858-056-2
    )
  8. ^ Wheatcroft, Geoffrey, Insuring Disaster, 26 November 1995. The New York Times, accessed 26 June 2008
  9. ^ Back Issues 15.04.04: NATIONAL PRESS ROLL OF HONOUR Archived 17 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine at pressgazette.co.uk
  10. ^ An exposé of the British libel laws
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