Career
Hennessy was a journalist for the Times Higher Education Supplement from 1972-74. He wrote leaders for The Times from 1974–82, for which he was also the Whitehall Correspondent. He was The Financial Times' Lobby Correspondent at Westminster in 1976 and he wrote for The Economist in 1982. He co-founded the Institute of Contemporary British History in 1986. He was a regular presenter of Analysis on BBC Radio 4 from 1987 to 1992. From 1994 to 1997, he gave public lectures as professor of rhetoric at Gresham College, London. From 1992-2000 he was Professor of Contemporary History at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London. From 2001, he has been Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary.
His analysis of post-war Britain, Never Again: Britain 1945-1951, won the Duff Cooper Prize in 1992 and the NCR Book Award in 1993.
On 17 November 2005, he made a trenchant appearance alongside Lord Wilson of Dinton before the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee on the publication of political memoirs.
His study of Britain in the 1950s and the rise of Harold Macmillan, Having It So Good: Britain in the 1950s, won the 2007 Orwell Prize for political writing.
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