Kingsley Martin

Basil Kingsley Martin (28 July 1897, London, England – 16 February 1969, Cairo, Egypt), usually known as Kingsley Martin, was a British journalist who edited the left-leaning political magazine the New Statesman from 1930 to 1960.

The son of a socialist and pacifist Congregationalist minister, and younger brother of the housing reformer Irene Barclay, Martin grew up with a strong political influence in his life. After primary school he earned a scholarship to Mill Hill School. While still at school, Martin became liable to conscription. Being a pacifist, he was a conscientious objector to the first world war and refused to fight in it, but he did not object to serving as a medical orderly for a few months caring for wounded soldiers. He later joined the Friends' Ambulance Unit, and in 1918 was sent to the Western Front to serve with them.

After the war he returned to academic life at Magdalene College, Cambridge. While studying at the college he became politically active and joined many groups such as the Union of Democratic Control and the Fabian Society. After obtaining his degree, Martin moved to the US to teach at Princeton University for a year. When he returned to England, Martin was hired as a book reviewer for the journal The Nation. His employer also used his connections to get him a teaching job at the London School of Economics, under Harold Laski. As well as a new job, Kingsley also managed to publish one of his earliest books, The Triumph of Lord Palmerston. Martin remained at the LSE for three years, before he was offered a job as a leader writer at the Manchester Guardian. Martin accepted, and during his time there he published another work; French Liberal Thought in the Eighteenth Century.

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