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Simon Kuper

Life & Arts Columnist

Simon Kuper joined the Financial Times in 1994. He wrote the daily currencies column, before leaving the FT in 1998. He returned in 2002 as a sports columnist and has been there ever since. Nowadays he writes a general column for the Weekend FT on all manner of topics from politics to books, and on cities including London, Paris, Johannesburg and Miami.

Email Simon Kuper @KuperSimon (link opens in a new browser window)
Email Simon Kuper @KuperSimon (link opens in a new browser window)

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  • Thursday, 18 February, 2021
    FT MagazineLife & Arts
    How the UK’s vaccine success can drive life after Brexit

    ‘Suddenly, the UK has a vaccine industry. Helping winners in emerging sectors: here’s an industrial strategy’

  • Thursday, 11 February, 2021
    FT MagazineLife & Arts
    Former Australian PMs put Murdoch in the hot seat on climate change

    The media magnate’s empire, offering a platform to sceptical voices, is accused of holding significant sway in this arena

  • Monday, 8 February, 2021
    FT Globetrotter
    Portrait of a park: the Tuileries Garden, Paris – a longstanding love affair

    Home to Rodin’s ‘Kiss’, this storied, quintessentially Parisian park is now the place for a romantic rendezvous

  • Thursday, 4 February, 2021
    FT MagazineCoronavirus treatment
    How to save the world from long Covid

    ‘We need to spend whatever it takes on wartime-style mobilisation to make, distribute and inject vaccines’

  • Friday, 29 January, 2021
    FT Magazine
    Tales from a traitor — an encounter with cold war spy George Blake

    ‘I’m sorry about the suffering I caused. But, well, there’s nothing to be done about that’

  • Wednesday, 27 January, 2021
    Television
    Tiger Woods — a golfer and an America before the fall

    HBO documentary ‘Tiger’ harks back to an era of glorying in wealth, optimism and unstoppable athletes

  • Saturday, 23 January, 2021
    FT Magazine
    Mohamed Bourouissa’s work reflects a new art and a new France

    A long fascination with life on the margins has inspired photographs of Paris’s ‘banlieusards’ and a film made in jail

  • Thursday, 21 January, 2021
    FT MagazineLife & Arts
    Why does Davos Man get it so wrong?

    Instead of global leaders making the big speeches, the World Economic Forum should confine them to the audience

  • Thursday, 14 January, 2021
    FT MagazineLife & Arts
    Joe Biden needs a new playbook for a new age

    ‘Biden’s administration will include many veterans of 2008. But the world and the US of 2008 no longer exist’

  • Promoted Content
  • Thursday, 7 January, 2021
    FT MagazineLondon fights for its future
    The triple threat to London’s city top spot

    How Covid-19, Brexit and the global role of English could cost the capital its clout

  • Saturday, 2 January, 2021
    The office: a photography special
    Simon Kuper: my two decades as a working-from-home pioneer

    ‘When I realised I could write my column from anywhere, I bought a flat in Paris. I suspect the FT didn’t even notice.’ Photography by Thomas Demand

  • Thursday, 17 December, 2020
    FT MagazineLife & Arts
    The challenges of covering 2020

    ‘Readers rightly accuse me of bias against Trump and Brexit. Both movements offend my cosmopolitan instincts’

  • Thursday, 10 December, 2020
    FT MagazineLife & Arts
    What world is Brexit being launched into?

    ‘The EU has found in Brexit almost the only thing that unites its members’

  • Monday, 30 November, 2020
    ReviewBooks
    Juve! 100 Years of an Italian Football Dynasty

    Herbie Sykes’ history of Italy’s dominant team is a study in how power works in the country

  • Thursday, 26 November, 2020
    ObituaryDiego Maradona
    Diego Maradona, Argentine football great, 1960-2020

    Supreme player who led his country to victory at 1986 World Cup in a tumultuous life on and off the pitch

  • Thursday, 26 November, 2020
    FT MagazineCoronavirus treatment
    Never mind what antivaxxers say — just watch what they do

    Even vaccine-hesitant countries show high levels of uptake for inoculations, and Covid-19 will be no different

  • Friday, 20 November, 2020
    FT SeriesBest Books of the Year 2020
    Best books of 2020: Sport

    Simon Kuper selects his must-read titles

  • Thursday, 19 November, 2020
    FT MagazineLife & Arts
    Have journalists finally learnt how to challenge political lies?

    The profession needs much higher standards to prevent Trump-like figures broadcasting falsehoods

  • Thursday, 12 November, 2020
    FT MagazineClimate change
    Despite the Biden victory and a vaccine, we shouldn’t celebrate just yet

    ‘Even if we can beat nativism and the other virus, we’ll remain stuck with a worse problem: climate change’

  • Thursday, 29 October, 2020
    FT MagazineDonald Trump
    If Biden wins, what’s next for Trump — and Trumpism?

    ‘Trumpism would survive, but probably couldn’t win another election. It would be a personality cult without the personality’

  • Thursday, 22 October, 2020
    FT MagazineLife & Arts
    Why the urban poor will be forced to leave big cities

    Forget the Zooming classes fleeing to the country. This exodus could reshape city life for years to come

  • Saturday, 17 October, 2020
    FT Magazine
    Arsène Wenger on leadership and life after Arsenal

    For 22 years, the Frenchman lived and breathed managing the club. ‘I was not completely normal,’ he tells Simon Kuper

  • Friday, 16 October, 2020
    Football
    Small English football clubs will rise from the ashes

    They have survived wars, depressions and crooks; even if some fold, they will survive Covid, too

  • Thursday, 15 October, 2020
    FT MagazineBrexit
    What Leavers and Remainers really think now

    ‘Brexit focus groups show people still want to take back control but confess to national despair’

  • Thursday, 8 October, 2020
    FT MagazineEducation
    Why the US and UK face a university challenge

    ‘If you’re 18 and looking to study in English, British and American colleges are no longer the obvious choice’

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