James Whitaker

James Edward Anthony Whitaker (1 October 194015 February 2012) was an English journalist, specialising in the British royal family. Early life Born in Cheltenham, elder son of George Edward Dudley Whitaker, OBE (1916-1983), and Mary Evelyn Austin, née Haslett (died 1989). George Whitaker, of Wolverton Park, Wolverton, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, was managing director of Sperry Rand by 1972, having previously been a sales director and general manager at Fisher Humphries & Co. Ltd and Salopian Engineers Ltd, manufacturers of agricultural equipment. The Whitaker family had owned an estate, Caldwell (alternately given as "Caldewell"), near Pershore, Worcestershire; George Whitaker's mother, Daisy, was sister of the cricketers Maurice Jewell, Arthur Jewell, and John Jewell, they being children of Maurice Jewell, of Hall Place, Bexley, Kent, vice-consul at Chile. Whitaker was educated at Cheltenham College, then worked as an articled clerk in an accountancy firm, before in 1963, becoming a reporter at the Hounslow, Brentford and Chiswick Post. Career In 1966, Whitaker scored his first scoop when he went undercover working as a cloakroom attendant in the newly opened Playboy Club in London. In 1967, he moved to the Daily Mail, and in 1971, joined the William Hickey column team at the Daily Express.