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Peter Aspden is the Financial Times’ arts writer, having previously been its arts editor for five years. He joined the paper in 1994, as deputy books and arts editor and a general feature writer on Weekend FT. He has written on numerous subjects, including travel, religion, politics, history, most art forms and sport: he covered the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996, and the World Cup in France in 1998.
He was born in London in 1958, but spent much of his childhood in Greece, where his mother was born. He was educated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics, before going into journalism. He joined the Times Higher Education Supplement in 1985, where he went on to become deputy editor.
He has been writing a weekly column on contemporary culture since January 2004; it appears in the Life & Arts section every Saturday. - -
Band-aid for seasonal spirit
Touched by a compilation of 1950s Christmas songs, Peter Aspden returns to holiday chart-toppers from past decades and ponders how they have served as markers of the times
Lunch with the FT: Evgeny Lebedev
The charming billionaire oligarch talks to Peter Aspden about growing up as the son of a KGB agent, buying the Evening Standard and promoting Russian culture in Britain
Intangible notes of cool
Whatever cool was, Miles Davis captured it: those taut, elegant musical lines that expressed effortlessness, freedom and melancholy all at the same time, writes Peter Aspden
Rocking all over the world
As the Berlin wall fell in 1989, households in parts of eastern Europe tuned in to MTV and found themselves part of a brash new world, writes Peter Aspden
Putting LA at the heart of world culture
The philanthropist and collector Eli Broad tells Peter Aspden he wants his city to become a must-visit cultural destination
The girl’s got gall
Martha Wainwright, a singer who defies categorisation, tackles Edith Piaf in a ‘chanson’ CD that sounds to Peter Aspden like the opposite of today’s cynically-crafted pop music
This year’s Prix Pictet winner
Commercial photographer Nadav Kander’s attention to the ‘smallness of the individual’ powered his award-winning series, writes Peter Aspden
Because the night belonged to her
Patti Smith performed at a new exhibition of Mapplethorpe photographs and Peter Aspden says she has mastered the delicate dilemma of how a posturing rock star should handle the autumnal years
Past masters beckon for the followers of modernity
Brit art’s big week may foreshadow a return to pre-modern art. What better sums up the 21st century than the lust for celebrity and the rapid dissemination of triviality? writes Peter Aspden
Frieze art fair: Mix of worldly and weird
Despite the talk of crisis in the air, dealers are reporting brisk trade and collectors are turning out in large numbers to take advantage of reduced prices, writes Peter Aspden
