Early Life and Career Outside Parliament
Gove was born in Edinburgh, but at four months old, he was adopted by a Labour-supporting family in Aberdeen, where he was brought up. His father ran a fish processing business; his mother was a lab assistant at the University of Aberdeen before working at the Aberdeen School for the Deaf.
He was initially state school educated in Aberdeen, later attending the independent Robert Gordon's College, to which he won a scholarship. From 1985 to 1988 he studied English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where he served as President of the Oxford Union. He was awarded a 2:1 degree.
Gove became a trainee reporter at the Press and Journal in Aberdeen, where he spent several months on strike in a dispute over union recognition and representation. He joined The Times in 1996 as a leader writer and has been its comment editor, news editor, Saturday editor and assistant editor. He has also written a weekly column on politics and current affairs for The Times and contributed to the Times Literary Supplement, Prospect magazine and The Spectator. He remains on good terms with Rupert Murdoch. He has also written a sympathetic biography of Michael Portillo and a critical study of the Northern Ireland peace process, The Price of Peace, for which he won the Charles Douglas-Home Prize. Gove was instrumental in the launch of the new centre-right magazine Standpoint, and serves on its advisory board.
He has worked for the BBC's Today programme, On The Record, Scottish Television and the Channel 4 monologue programme A Stab In The Dark, alongside David Baddiel and Tracey MacLeod, and was a regular panellist on BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze and Newsnight Review on BBC Two.
Gove was a member of the winning team in Grampian Television's quiz show Top Club, and played the school chaplain in the 1995 family comedy A Feast at Midnight.
Read more about this topic: Michael Gove
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