Dick Leonard


Richard Lawrence Leonard is a British writer and journalist, writing as Dick Leonard, and also a former British Labour politician. He is a pro-European social democrat and was a supporter of the late Labour Foreign Secretary Anthony Crosland who championed Gaitskellism. He is married to Irène Heidelberger-Leonard, a scholar of postwar German literature, and is the father of Mark Leonard, an expert on foreign policy, and Miriam Leonard, a classical scholar.
Dick Leonard was educated at the Institute of Education at London University and the University of Essex, where he graduated with a MA degree. He was Deputy General Secretary of the Fabian Society from 1955 to 1960, where he founded the Young Fabians in 1960, he also became a freelance journalist and broadcaster. From 1968 to 1970 he was a senior research fellow at Essex.
He served as Member of Parliament for Romford from 1970 until the February 1974 general election, when there were major changes made to the constituency boundary. During his time in the House he was PPS to Anthony Crosland.
From 1974 to 1985 he was Assistant Editor of The Economist. He served as Europe Correspondent in Brussels for The Observer from 1989 to 1997. He remained in Brussels until 2009 and wrote on Belgian politics in The Bulletin, and on European affairs in The Guardian, the Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement, European Voice, and other newspapers in several countries.
Dick Leonard has been a Visiting Professor at the Free University of Brussels and a Senior Adviser at the Centre for European Policy Studies. He lives in London.

Critical studies, reviews and biography