Pearson campaigned in favour of Brexit and in 2016 described Brussels as the jihadist capital of Europe. She has criticised the Gender Recognition Act 2004, and opposed transgender rights, describing them as a "an evil trans ideology". She was bankrupted in 2015 by HMRC for non-payment of tax.[4]
Pearson was a columnist with London's Evening Standard and The Daily Telegraph, then took over from Lynda Lee-Potter at the Daily Mail. Pearson ended her column for the Daily Mail in April 2010, when it was said that she was to join The Daily Telegraph.[11][12] In September 2010, Pearson resumed her role as a columnist with The Daily Telegraph.[13] As of 2015[update], Pearson is a columnist and chief interviewer of The Daily Telegraph.[14] Pearson has presented Channel 4's J'Accuse and BBC Radio 4's The Copysnatchers. She participated as a panellist on Late Review, the predecessor of Newsnight Review.
In November 2024, Pearson was visited at home by Essex Police asking her to undergo a voluntary interview after a complaint that she had incited racial hatred with a tweet posted in November 2023. During a period of scrutiny on British policing of pro-Palestinian protests during the Israel–Hamas war, Pearson had posted a photo of Greater Manchester Police officers standing besides supporters of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party waving the party's flag. However, despite the flag including the word "Pakistan", she called the flagbearers "Jew haters" and misidentified the officers as Metropolitan Police officers, citing an incident where that service had not met with an Israeli-advocacy group. These errors were corrected by a Community Note and Pearson deleted the tweet.[16][17]
After the visit, Pearson wrote a Telegraph column criticizing the incident and saying that the police had said it was a non-crime hate incident, which garnered public sympathy from right-wing political figures. Afterwards, Essex Police reported The Daily Telegraph to the Independent Press Standards Organisation, saying that it had body camera footage proving that they had never said it was a non-crime hate incident.[16][17]
Suzanne Moore writing about the incident and its implications in The Telegraph likened the Police's treatment of Pearson to Ruhollah Khomeini's Fatwa against Sir Salman Rushdie in the wake of the Satanic Verses controversy stating "The new authoritarianism says that words are actual violence and somehow people must be protected from them. The Mullahs said that over Rushdie's work, never forget that."[18]
Books
Pearson's first novel, I Don't Know How She Does It (2002), was a "chick lit" examination of the pressures of modern motherhood. The book was a bestseller in the UK and the US, selling four million copies, and was made into a film.[2]
Pearson was sued by Miramax for non-delivery of a second novel, I Think I Love You, for which she received a US$700,000 advance in 2003. Delivery was due in 2005:[19] it was published in 2010.[20] The novel was about a teenager's passion for David Cassidy in the 1970s and the man writing the so-called replies from David Cassidy to the teenage fans, who meet up 20 years later after marriage, divorce, and children. The Daily Telegraph praised the novel for its warmth and sincerity;[20] however, The Guardian described it as an "unrealistic and sappy romance".[21]
A sequel to I Don't Know How She Does It was published in September 2017. The novel, How Hard Can It Be,[22] continues the story of the protagonist Kate Reddy, now approaching 50 and struggling with bias against older women in the workplace. The book attracted considerable publicity, but was not a bestseller.[3]
Pearson views transgender identity as "an evil trans ideology"[27] and that "Organisations that should know better have allowed themselves to be infiltrated by a warped ideology that dares to call the fundamental truths of biological science lies".[28][29]
Writing for the Telegraph about the NHS's decision to log their patient's sexual orientation on every visit; she claimed that politicians were capitulating to the will of LGBT lobby groups. She questioned the allocation of public funds to the advocacy group LGBT Foundation:
"It's clear that spineless politicians, pathetically eager to be on-trend, are being manipulated by lobby groups such as the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Foundation, a “charity” reportedly behind the new NHS policy".[28][29]
COVID-19 pandemic
Pearson said during the COVID-19 pandemic that she would not wear a protective face mask because she considered it demeaning.[30] In September 2020, Pearson suggested purposely infecting young people with COVID-19 to create herd immunity within the population.[31] In January 2021, Pearson drew censure from Twitter users after outing a critic's employer on Twitter, following her claim that National Health Service (NHS) bed occupancy during the pandemic was lower than suggested.[32]
According to The Guardian, Pearson has made misleading claims about COVID-19.[30] In December 2020, she wrote in her Telegraph column that "Last week, Sir Patrick Vallance and Prof Chris Whitty presented another of their Graphs of Doom; this one cherry-picked several hospitals on course to run out of beds." However, this was false, and no such data was presented in the period stated.[33] In July 2021, she misleadingly tweeted that hospitalisations were 0.5% of COVID-19 cases; Full Fact found that the calculation was incorrect, but also did not make sense due to the lag between testing positive and hospitalisation.[34]
Personal life
Pearson was married to fellow journalist Simon Pearson,[1] in May 1988 in Lincoln. She subsequently lived with Anthony Lane,[35] a film critic for The New Yorker. In January, 2024 she adopted a homeless kitten from Turkey.[36]
^Moore, Suzanne (20 November 2024). "I don't always agree with Allison Pearson but I will defend her right to free speech". The Telegraph. Retrieved 19 December 2024. That the Left could not stand up for this basic liberty breaks my heart, but it's all too late now. The new authoritarianism says that words are actual violence and somehow people must be protected from them. The Mullahs said that over Rushdie's work, never forget that. As that great man once said: "Nobody has the right not to be offended." If you will only defend the speech of those you like or agree with, then you are not a social justice warrior, you are a weak simpleton.
