Simon Kuper

He also writes for other publications and has written a number of books.

• Name — Simon Kuper • Birth Name — Simon Gad Kuper • Born — 15 October 1969 • Birthplace — Kampala, Uganda • Education — University of Oxford (BA) • Awards — * Kennedy Scholarship (1993) • William Hill Sports Book of the Year (1994) • Spouse — Pamela Druckerman • Known for — * Sports journalism • Political journalism • Occupation — Journalist

Kuper was born in Uganda of South African-born parents, and moved to Leiden in the Netherlands as a child. Kuper's father Adam Kuper, was a professor in anthropology at Leiden University. He was brought up Jewish and is named after his paternal grandfather, Simon Meyer Kuper, who was a South African Supreme Court judge assassinated in 1963. He studied History and German at the University of Oxford, and attended Harvard University as a Kennedy Scholar in 1993.

Kuper joined the Financial Times in 1994. He wrote the daily currencies column and worked in other departments, before leaving in 1998. He returned in 2002 as a sports columnist and has worked there ever since. Kuper's sportswriting is appreciated for its exploration of the societal, political and cultural impact of sports globally. Kuper discusses the culture that surrounds football — such as the Old Firm rivalry — as well as the on-field play. He has written on cricket, with articles on cricket in the Netherlands and cricket in apartheid South Africa. Kuper also contributes to the FTs Weekend magazine, as a Life & Arts columnist, often with long-form essays and interviews spanning themes such as current affairs, travel, history and politics. Kuper was awarded the British Society of Magazine Editors' prize for Columnist of the Year in 2016 and 2020.

• 1994 - Football Against the Enemy, William Hill awarded, released in the United States as Soccer Against the Enemy. The Times wrote of the book: "If you like football, read it. If you don't like football, read it." • 2003 - Ajax, The Dutch, the War: Football in Europe during the Second World War • 2009 - Soccernomics with Stefan Szymanski. The authors subsequently put forward a formula allowing Kuper to predict that Serbia and Brazil would play the 2010 FIFA World Cup Final. • 2011 - The Football Men, a collection of articles about the world of football over 13 years, along with new pieces written for the book. • 2021 - Barça: The Rise and Fall of the Club that Built Modern Football. It won the Sunday Times award for Football Book of the Year 2022. • 2021 - The Happy Traitor, an account of the life and motivations of George Blake, a British spy for the Soviet Union. The narrative sheds light on Blake's ideological shifts and personal struggles with identity. • 2022 - Chums - How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK, about the connections that enabled a university network to dominate Westminster.

Kuper has lived in Jamaica, Sweden, Palo Alto, California, Berlin and London. As of 2026 Kuper lives in Paris with his wife, the American-French author Pamela Druckerman. They have three children. In 2022, he wrote in the Financial Times that he had recently become a naturalised French citizen after living in Paris for more than 20 years.