Paul Bede Johnson CBE (2 November 1928 – 12 January 2023) was a British journalist, popular historian, speechwriter and author.

His father, William Aloysius Johnson, was an artist and principal of the Art School in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.

At Stonyhurst College, Johnson received an education grounded in the Jesuit method,[3] which he preferred over the more secularised curriculum of Oxford.

Johnson adopted a left-wing political outlook during this period as he witnessed in May 1952 the police response to a riot in Paris (Communists were rioting over the visit of American general, Matthew Ridgway, who commanded the US Eighth Army during the Korean War; he had just been appointed NATO's Supreme Commander in Europe), the "ferocity [of which] I would not have believed had I not seen it with my own eyes.

[11] The New York Times mocked Johnson's novel Merrie England (1964):Grown-ups who have read Evelyn Waugh will find that satire requires more than indignation and a list of funny names...

[13] Statesmen and Nations (1971), the anthology of his Statesman articles, contains numerous reviews of biographies of conservative politicians and an openness to continental Europe; in one article, Johnson took a positive view of events of May 1968 in Paris, leading Colin Welch in The Spectator to accuse Johnson of possessing "a taste for violence".

During the late 1970s, Johnson began writing articles in the New Statesman attacking trade unions in particular, and leftism in general.

[18] Johnson was a critic of modernity because of what he saw as its moral relativism,[19] and he objected to those who use Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to justify their atheism, such as Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, or use it to promote biotechnological experimentation.

[20][21][22] As a conservative Catholic, Johnson regarded liberation theology as a heresy and defended clerical celibacy, but departed from others in seeing many good reasons for ordination of women as priests.

[24] He defended Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal,[25] finding his cover-up considerably less heinous than Bill Clinton's perjury and Oliver North's involvement in the Iran–Contra affair.

[28] Johnson was also active in the campaign, led by Norman Lamont, to prevent Pinochet's extradition to Spain after his 1998 arrest in London.

In 1999, Johnson was reported as saying: "There have been countless attempts to link him to human rights atrocities, but nobody has provided a single scrap of evidence.

"[30] Johnson described France as "a republic run by bureaucratic and party elites, whose errors are dealt with by strikes, street riots and blockades" rather than a democracy.

[40] Johnson was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to literature.