Stephan Shakespeare

Shakespeare was born as Stephan Kukowski in 1957 in Mönchengladbach, where his German father, a journalist, was the German Press Liaison Officer of Headquarters British Army of the Rhine. When he was five years old, the family moved to the UK, where he was educated at Christ's Hospital school near Horsham, West Sussex. Stephan was also an artist (as Stephan Kukowski) creating the imaginary "The Brunch Museum", together with the fluxus artist George Brecht, first exhibited in London in 1976. After graduating from Oxford, he took a one-year teaching course in Kingston upon Thames, during which time he was a member of the Socialist Workers' Student Society. He became a teacher and headmaster in Los Angeles, California in the 1980s. After marrying Rosamund Shakespeare, he exchanged his surname for that of his wife.

After returning home to the UK from the US, he taught at Charles Edward Brooke girls secondary school in Lambeth where he used his original family name. He was critical of educational practices in 1990s' Lambeth and the Evening Standard published his educational criticisms. He became involved in politics, using the name Shakespeare, first as a political commentator and then as Jeffrey Archer's Campaign Director during and after his failed London mayoral campaign. He was also a Conservative Party pollster.

In the 1997 general election, Shakespeare was the Conservative candidate for Colchester though he was defeated by Bob Russell with a majority of 1,551. During the campaign, Margaret Thatcher, against whom he had demonstrated as a student 17 years earlier, came to Colchester in order to support his attempt to win the seat for the Conservatives.