Simon Heffer

Simon James Heffer (born 18 July 1960) is an English historian, journalist, author and political commentator. He has published several biographies and a series of books on the social history of Great Britain from the mid-nineteenth century until the end of the First World War. He was appointed professorial research fellow at the University of Buckingham in 2017.

He has worked as a columnist for the Daily Mail and since 2015 has had a weekly column in The Sunday Telegraph. As a political commentator, Heffer takes a socially conservative position.

Quotes

• The repulsive Paul Gadd — or Gary Glitter — as I cannot bring myself to call him because of its frivolous connotations says he wants police protection because some "nutter" might kill him. I'm not sure how much of a nutter one would have to be to want to kill Gadd, a convicted paedophile with a penchant for small girls. Most rational people would find it quite acceptable if he were to be taken out and shot in the back of the head, and will be regretting that he came through his three years in a Vietnamese jail in quite such good shape. I am not for a moment suggesting that anyone outraged by the existence of Gadd, or who fears for their own children when this man is loose on British soil, should take the law into his own hands. I do, though, fail to see how making him sign the sex offenders' register is going to make the blindest bit of difference. The police have better things to do than to protect this piece of filth. The only reason why they should stick close to him, though, is to keep him away from our children.
  • "Police should not protect Gary Glitter", The Daily Telegraph (2 August 2008), p. 25
  • The online version is no longer on the newspaper's website.