John Bew

John Bew CMG is a Senior Fellow with the Belfer Center’s Applied History Project. He is a Professor of History and Foreign Policy at the Centre for Statecraft and National Security (CSNS), based within the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Previously, he served as Foreign Policy Advisor at No10 Downing Street under four prime ministers. He is also currently the Brady and Andrea Enright Senior Fellow (adjunct) at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, senior advisor at the Australian College of National Security, and fellow of the Royal Historical Society. 

While in No10, Bew led Britain’s 2021, 2023, and 2025 national security strategies and contributed to NATO’s recent Strategic Concept. His team produced the Integrated Review of Foreign Policy, Defence and Security in 2021 and the Integrated Review Refresh of 2023. During this time, he also served as the UK’s official representative in the NATO Secretary General’s Reflections Group. Following his return to academia, he was re-appointed by the Labour government again to lead work on National Security Strategy 2025: Security for the British people in a dangerous world, thereby completing a hattrick of national security strategies. In 2025 he was appointed Commander of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George for his services to British foreign policy. 

After joining No10 Downing Street as Foreign Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister in 2019, Bew held that position for over five years and through successive administrations, making him one of the longest serving and most senior advisors in Downing Street. Uniquely for a No10 appointee, he served through two general elections and for four Prime Ministers. As the chief foreign policy advisor in No10 for more than half a decade, he was intimately involved in the key decisions on UK national security policy in this period. He also negotiated several international agreements and travelled round the world with the Prime Minister, attending successive summits and meetings of the UN General Assembly, NATO, G7 and G20.

Bew is the author of five books, including Realpolitik: A History, Castlereagh: A Life, and many academic articles and edited collections. His best-known work is his biography of Clement Attlee, Citizen Clem: A Biography of Attlee, which won three national awards, including the prestigious Orwell Prize. In 2012, he became the youngest ever holder of the Henry A. Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress and in 2015 he won the Philip Leverhulme Prize for International Studies. Bew began his academic career at Cambridge University.