Peter Watson

Who is Peter Watson?

Peter Watson is an intellectual historian and former journalist, now perhaps best known for his work in the history of ideas.

He was educated at the universities of Durham, London, and Rome. Watson was deputy editor of New Society, and was for four years a member of the Insight team at The Sunday Times. He was New York correspondent of The Times and has written for The Observer, Punch, The Spectator and The New York Times. His journalistic work has included detailed investigation of auction houses and the international market in stolen antiquities, which has resulted in books and TV documentaries.

In June 1997 Watson became a research associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at Cambridge. He has published thirteen books, including The German Genius, published by Simon & Schuster in 2010. His latest is 2012's The Great Divide: Nature and Human Nature in the Old World and the New.

In an interview on CBC News on 5 May 2007, Watson stated: "Religion has kept civilization back for hundreds of years, and the biggest mistake in the history of civilization, is ethical monotheism, the concept of the one God. Let's get rid of it and be rational."