Douglas Kear Murray (born 16 July 1979) is a British author and political commentator. He founded the Centre for Social Cohesion in 2007, which became part of the Henry Jackson Society, where he was associate director from 2011 to 2018. He is also an associate editor of the conservative-leaning British political and cultural magazine The Spectator. Murray has also written columns for publications such as The Wall Street Journal. Murray's books include Neoconservatism: Why We Need It (2005), Bloody Sunday: Truths, Lies and the Saville Inquiry (2011) about the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017), The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (2019), and The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason (2022). Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Sohrab Ahmari have praised Murray's work and writing on Islam in Europe. French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy has said of Murray, "Whether one agrees with him or not" he is "one of the most important public intellectuals today." Critics claim his views and ideology are linked to far-right political ideologies and accuse him of promoting far-right conspiracy theories. Murray has rejected descriptions of his politics as far-right, and believes that the term "far-right" is overused by the political left. Early life Murray was born in Hammersmith, London, by an English, school teacher mother, and a Scottish, Gaelic-speaking father who was born on the Isle of Lewis and worked as a civil servant. He has one elder brother. In an interview with The Herald Murray stated that his father had intended to be in London temporarily but stayed after meeting his mother and that they "encouraged a good discussion around the dinner table" when he was growing up but "neither are political." Murray was educated at his local state primary and secondary schools, before going to a comprehensive which had previously been a grammar school. Recalling this experience in 2011, he wrote, "My parents had been promised that the old grammar school standards and ethos remained, but none did. By the time I arrived the school was what would now be described as 'an inner-city sink school', a war zone similar to those many of the children's parents had escaped from." Murray's parents withdrew him from the school after a year. He was awarded scholarships to St Benedict's School, Ealing, and subsequently Eton College, before going on to study English at Magdalen College,