Dating & Relationship status

In 2019, Murray spent weeks urging New Statesman journalist George Eaton and editor Jason Cowley to share the original recording of an interview between Eaton and Sir Roger Scruton, with Murray branding the published interview, which attributed a number of controversial statements to Scruton, as “journalistic dishonesty”. Murray eventually managed to acquire the recording, which formed the basis of an article defending Scruton, arguing that his remarks had been misinterpreted. The New Statesman subsequently apologised for Eaton’s misrepresentation.

In 2016, Murray organised a competition through The Spectator of offensive poems about Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for which a reader donated £1,000 as the top prize. This was in reaction to the Böhmermann affair, in which German satirist, Jan Böhmermann, was prosecuted under the German penal code for such a poem. One of Murray’s articles on the affair contributed to his being longlisted for the 2017 Orwell Prize for Journalism five years after his book, Bloody Sunday: Truths, Lies and The Saville Inquiry, was longlisted for the 2012 Book Prize. He announced the winner of the poetry competition as Boris Johnson, former editor of the magazine, current British Prime Minister and former Mayor of London, who is one-eighth Turkish.

Murray is the recipient of frequent death threats as a result of his views. Following the Charlie Hebdo shooting in January 2015, he was advised by the police not to appear in public.

Murray is a frequent critic of Islam, and has identified what he sees as, “a creed of Islamic fascism—a malignant fundamentalism, woken from the Dark How old?s to assault us here and now”.

In June 2013, his e-book Islamophilia: a Very Metropolitan Malady was published. His book The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam was published in May 2017; It spent almost 20 weeks on the Sunday Times bestseller list and was a No. 1 bestseller in non-fiction. It has subsequently been published in more than 20 languages worldwide. The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity was published in September 2019 and became a Sunday Times bestseller; the publication has also been nominated as an Audio Book of the year for the British Book Awards.

Murray has appeared on a number of British current affairs programmes, including the BBC’s Question Time, This Week, HardTalk, the Today programme, The Big Questions, Daily Politics, and Sunday Morning Live. Murray has written for The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph,The Guardian, Standpoint, and UnHerd. In 2012 he was hired as a contributing editor of The Spectator. He has debated at the Cambridge Union, the Oxford Union, and participated in several Intelligence Squared and Intelligence Squared US debates. He has also appeared on other TV channels such as Sky News and Al Jazeera.

In 2010, Murray argued against the motion in an Intelligence Squared US debate titled “Is Islam a Religion of Peace?” In 2014, he argued for the motion in an Oxford Union debate titled “This House Believes postwar Britain has seen too much immigration”.

In June 2009, Murray accepted an invitation from the Global Issues Society (GIS) to a debate with Al-Muhajiroun leader, Anjem Choudary , on Sharia law and British law at Conway Hall. Members of Al-Muhajiroun tried to segregate men and women at the entrance of the event, despite GIS’s assurance that the event’s security was provided by a third party. Violence broke out even before Murray arrived. Conway Hall management canceled the debate in protest to the forced separation of men and women. Outside the building, a confrontation between Choudary and Murray over the cancellation of the event occurred. Murray alleged that the event was not neutral and that it was being policed by Al-Muhajiroun guards. Murray’s Center for Social Cohesion, had published a study showing that one in seven Islam-related terrorist cases in the UK could be linked to Al-Muhajiroun and the organization was indeed banned shortly afterwards, due to its links with extremism.

In 2009, Murray was prevented from chairing a debate at the London School of Economics between Alan Sked and Hamza Tzortzis, with the university citing security concerns following a week-long student protest against Israel’s attacks on Gaza. The move was criticised by the conservative press such as The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator.

In 2008, Murray listed the cases of 27 writers, activists, politicians and artists – including Sir Salman Rushdie, Maryam Namazie and Anwar Shaikh, all three of whom had received death threats due to their criticism of Islam. Murray said that “Unless Muslims are allowed to discuss their religion without fear of attack there can be no chance of reform or genuine freedom of conscience within Islam.”

In 2006, he published a defence of neoconservatism — Neoconservatism: Why We Need It — and made a speaking tour promoting the book in the US.. The publication was subsequently reviewed in the Arab journal Asharq Al-Awsat by the Iranian author Amir Taheri: “Whether one agrees with him or not Murray has made a valuable contribution to the global battle of ideas.” In 2007, he assisted in the writing of Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership by Gen. Dr. Klaus Naumann, Gen. John Shalikashvili, Field Marshal The Lord Inge, Adm. Jacques Lanxade, and Gen. Henk van den Breemen. His book Bloody Sunday was (jointly) awarded the 2011–2012 Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize.

Murray has written columns for publications such as Standpoint and The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of Neoconservatism: Why We Need It (2005), Bloody Sunday: Truths, Lies and the Saville Inquiry (2011) about the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017), and The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (2019).

At age 19, while in his second year at the University of Oxford, he published Bosie: A Bio details of Lord Alfred Douglas, which was described by Christopher Hitchens as “masterly”. Bosie was awarded a Lambda Award for gay life story in 2000. After leaving Oxford, Murray wrote a play, Nightfall, about the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.

Douglas Kear Murray (born 16 July 1979) is a British conservative author and political commentator. He founded the Centre for Social Cohesion in 2007, which became part of the Henry Jackson Society, where he was Associate Director from 2011–18. He is also an associate editor of the British political and cultural magazine The Spectator.