Harry Cummins

Born in Townsville, Queensland, in 1961, Harry Cummins was educated at University College London. After working as a teacher and a journalist, he was made the Press Officer of the British Council, also in London, for which he undertook projects in Russia, Colombia, Georgia and at the Venice Biennale. Townsville, his book of poems, was published in 1995: his poetry has also appeared in The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse and other anthologies. 

In 2004, he published four pseudonymous articles in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph that were strongly critical of Islam’s treatment of non-Muslim peoples. When the Guardian newspaper solicited informers to expose the “Islamophobe”, he was denounced in secret and dismissed in public. “There is no place in the British Council for people who publish such hateful utterances”, said the Director General of the Council, which had just used taxpayers’ money to pay Muslim writers to rail on its website against ”the fascist Jewish state” as well as the USA and the UK itself. Although The Guardian, The New York Times, the BBC and others then attacked Cummins, events since 2004 have seemed to many to render his Telegraph articles prophetic. Harry has recently been working in business to business communications.