John O'Sullivan, CBE (born 25 April 1942) is a British conservative political commentator and journalist. From 1987 to 1988, he was a senior policy writer and speechwriter in 10 Downing Street for Margaret Thatcher when she was British prime minister and remained close to her up to her death. O'Sullivan served from 2008–2012 as vice-president and executive editor of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He was editor of the Australian monthly magazine Quadrant from 2015 to 2017. Since 2017, he has been president of the Danube Institute, a Fidesz government-financed think tank based in Budapest, Hungary, and also a member of the board of advisors for the , an NGO that works behind the scenes in crisis areas around the world. A former editor of National Review in the years 1988-1997, O'Sullivan has been an editor-at-large there since then. Early life Born in Liverpool, O'Sullivan was educated at St Mary's College, Crosby, and received his higher education at the University of London. He stood unsuccessfully as a Conservative candidate for the constituency of Gateshead West in the 1970 British general election. In 2014 he moved to Budapest, to set up the Danube Institute. He is the Director of 21st Century Initiatives and Senior Fellow at the National Review Institute in Washington, D.C.. Journalism career O'Sullivan is a former editor (1988–1997) and current editor-at-large of the opinion magazine National Review and a former senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. He had previously been the editor-in-chief of United Press International, editor-in-chief of the international affairs magazine, The National Interest, and a special adviser to British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1991 New Year's Honours List. In 1998 O'Sullivan was a leading member of the journalistic team that founded the National Post, a right-leaning national newspaper in Canada. O'Sullivan is the founder and co-chairman of the New Atlantic Initiative, an international organisation dedicated to reinvigorating and expanding the Atlantic community of democracies. The organisation was created at the Congress of Prague in May 1996 by Václav Havel and Margaret Thatcher. In 2013, O'Sullivan became first the director and then president of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based think tank, for which he is paid an annual salary of 150,000 Euros, indirectly financed by the Hungarian government. The Danube Institute exists to provide an centre of intellectual debate for conservatives and classical