[2] He graduated with a second-class degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Balliol College, Oxford,[3][4][5] and then studied at the Université libre de Bruxelles.

[6] Peston briefly worked as a stockbroker at Williams de Broë,[7] becoming a journalist in 1983 at the Investors Chronicle and joining The Independent newspaper on its launch in 1986.

During his time as Political Editor, he memorably fell out with the then Downing Street Press Secretary Alastair Campbell, who regularly mimicked Peston's habit of flicking back his hair, and once responded to a difficult question with the words: "Another question from the Peston school of smartarse journalism.

[8] In late 2005, it was announced that Peston would succeed Jeff Randall as BBC Business Editor, responsible for business and City coverage on the corporation's flagship TV and radio news programmes, the BBC News Channel, its website and on Radio 4's Today.

[citation needed] While no impropriety on the part of Peston was implied, it was claimed in The Observer[12] on 19 October 2008, that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) could enquire into the source of one of Peston's scoops which, in September 2008, in the fraught atmosphere of the 2008 financial crisis, revealed that merger talks between HBOS and Lloyds TSB were at an advanced stage.

In the minutes before the broadcast, buyers purchased millions of HBOS shares at the deflated price of 96p; in the hour following it, they could be sold for 215p.

On 4 February 2009, Peston appeared as a witness at the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee, along with Alex Brummer (City Editor, Daily Mail), Lionel Barber (editor of the Financial Times), Sir Simon Jenkins (The Guardian) and Sky News Business Editor Jeff Randall to answer questions on the role of the media in financial stability and "whether financial journalists should operate under any form of reporting restrictions during banking crises.

[22] In December 2019, Peston apologised for incorrectly tweeting, without verification, that a Labour activist had punched a Conservative Party adviser.

[30] His blog won the digital media category in the Private Equity and Venture Capital Journalist of the Year Awards.

[32] In 2011, he was honoured as a Fellow of Aberystwyth University in recognition of "his success in journalism, his insightful writing and his contribution to the local community".

[35] Elizabeth Grice in The Daily Telegraph identified "strangulated diction" and "repetition of small words" among his traits; in the same article, maintaining he is "loads better than [he] was", Peston himself conceded he is "still not as polished as some".

Brown's Britain was described by Sir Howard Davies, former director of the London School of Economics, as "a book of unusual political significance".

In The Guardian, Polly Toynbee said of it: "Reading Peston's book, you can only be flabbergasted all over again at how Labour kowtowed to wealth, glorified the City and put all the nation's economic eggs into one dangerous basket of fizzy finance.

The protagonist is a lobby journalist (political reporter) for the fictional Financial Chronicle and the colourful background to the story, set at the time of the 1997 general election in Britain, reflects Peston's detailed knowledge of his subject.

[40] They had known each other since their teenage years and only rekindled their relationship after her friend, Peston's sister Juliet, was hospitalised after a car crash.

[42][43] In September 2018, Peston said he felt guilty after falling in love with another woman several years after his wife's death, and revealed that he was now in a relationship with author and journalist Charlotte Edwardes.