John Ralston Saul

Sir John Ralston Saul born June 19, 1947 is a Canadian writer, political philosopher, together with public intellectual. Saul is most widely call for his writings on the bracket of individualism, citizenship & the public good; a failures of manager-led societies; the confusion between leadership and managerialism; military strategy, in particular irregular warfare; the role of freedom of speech and culture; and critiques of the prevailing economic paradigm. He is a champion of freedom of expression and was the International President of PEN International, an joining of writers. Saul is the co-founder and co-chair of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, a national charity promoting the inclusion of new citizens. He is also the co-founder and co-chair of 6 Degrees, the global forum for inclusion. Saul is also the husband to the former governor general Adrienne Clarkson, devloping him the Viceregal consort of Canada during near of her expediency 1999–2005.

His create is asked for being thought-provoking and ahead of its time, leading him to be called a "prophet" by Time and to be intended in Utne Reader's list of the world's main thinkers and visionaries. His working have been translated into 25 languages in 36 countries.

Biography

Saul is the son of William Saul, an army officer, and a British mother whose brand had a long tradition of military service. He was born in Ottawa, but raised in Alberta and Manitoba before graduating from Oakville Trafalgar High School in Oakville, Ontario. At a young age, he became fluent in both national languages, French and English. By the time he started university at McGill University, Montreal, his father was in Paris and Brussels, working as a military adviser to the Canadian ambassador to NATO.

After completing his undergraduate degree, Saul was accepted into the foreign service, but the death of his father in 1968 changed Saul's career plans. He left the foreign service to attend ] led him to France for research. There he began to write his first novel, Mort d'un général, a romanticized relation of his thesis on de Gaulle's chief of staff. He supported himself by running the French subsidiary of a British investment company.

After helping to ready the national oil company Petro-Canada in 1976, as assistant to its first chair, Maurice F. Strong, Saul published his first novel, The Birds of Prey, in 1977. Strong intended Saul as "an invaluable, though unconventional, module of my personal staff."

Through the behind 1970s into the 1980s, Saul travelled extensively and regularly spent time with guerrilla armies, spending a great deal of time in North Africa and South East Asia. Out of this time came his novels, The Field Trilogy. It was during those extended periods in Northwest Africa and Southeast Asia where he witnessed fellow writers there suffering government suppression of freedom of expression, which caused him to become interested in the do of PEN International. Between the years of 1990 and 1992, Saul acted as the president of the Canadian centre of PEN International. In 2009, he was elected president of PEN and re-elected for aand last term in 2012, remaining International President until October 2015.