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Christopher John Penrice Booker (born October 7 1937) is an English journalist and editor, educated at Shrewsbury School. He was a founding editor of Private Eye at the height of the British Satire Boom, but he was forced out in the magazine's early days by Richard Ingrams. He has, however, remained a regular contributor and joke writer on the magazine since its inception. In the late 1960s he wrote The Neophiliacs, a critical review of the media response to the cultural changes of the period 1954-1964, and one of the first books on the decade to take a 'disabused' line.

More recently he published The Seven Basic Plots of Literature: Why We Tell Stories, to mixed reviews.

He is the co-author, with Richard North, of The Great Deception, a book criticising the European Union. He has pursued a journalistic career, particularly with anti-EU commentary, as a columnist, notably in The Sunday Telegraph.

He was formerly married to the criminal barrister Christine Stone.

A controversy erupted in December 2006 when The Sunday Telegraph heavily censored Booker's column for December 3, removing sections highly critical of Conservative Party leader David Cameron. Booker told his colleague Richard North: "I was told by the SunTel editor today that my item attacking Cameron is to be dropped. This is the first time such a thing has happened since I began writing the column 16 years ago."

Reviews of The Seven Basic Plots

• Downhill since Milton, The Times, January 21st 2005.
• The plots thicken..., The Telegraph, November 11th 2004.