Francis Beckett is a writer and journalist, writing regularly for the New Statesman and The Guardian and for several other publications.

He has published several science fiction short stories (in the Young Oxford series from OUP) and his first play, The Sons of Catholic Gentlemen, was broadcast in 1997. He is a former president of the National Union of Journalists and a former Labour Party and trade union press officer.

Books by Francis Beckett include Clem Attlee (1997), Enemy Within - the Rise and Fall of the British Communist Party(1998), The Rebel who lost his Cause - the Tragedy of John Beckett MP (2000), Stalin's British Victims (2004), Nye Bevan (2004), The Blairs and their Court (2004), Margaret Thatcher (2006), The Great City Academy Fraud (2007), Gordon Brown (2007), Clem Attlee (2015), 1956: The Year That Changed Britain (2015) and Fascist in the Family: The Tragedy of John Beckett M.P. (2016)