Julie Burchill - Personal Life

Personal Life

Julie Burchill was born in Bristol, England. "Her father was a Communist union activist who worked in a distillery. Her mother had a job in a cardboard box factory." In 2010, Burchill wrote of her parents: "I don't care much for families. I adored my mum and dad, but to be honest I don't miss them much now they're dead." She did not attend university, leaving the A-levels she had started a few weeks earlier to begin writing for the New Musical Express (NME).

Burchill was briefly married to Tony Parsons (whom she met at NME), moving in with him in 1981, at age 21. She left three years later, leaving behind a son, and subsequently there has been "a steady stream of vitriol in both directions"; she claims to have got through the "sexual side" of their marriage "by pretending that my husband was my friend Peter York". Her relationships, particularly with Parsons, have featured regularly in her work; Parsons later wrote that "It's like having a stalker. I don't understand her fascination with someone whom she split up with 15 years ago."

After Parsons, Burchill married Cosmo Landesman, the son of Fran and Jay Landesman, with whom she also had a son. The sons from her marriages with Parsons and Landesman lived with their fathers after the separations. After splitting from Landesman in 1992, she subsequently married again in 2004, to Daniel Raven, about 13 years her junior, her former lover Charlotte Raven's brother. She wrote of the joys of having a "toyboy" in her Times "Weekend Review" column. Fellow NME journalist/author Paul Wellings wrote about their friendship in his book I'm A Journalist...Get Me Out Of Here. She has written about her lesbian relationships, and declared that "I would never describe myself as 'heterosexual', 'straight' or anything else. Especially not 'bisexual' (it sounds like a sort of communal vehicle missing a mudguard). I like 'spontaneous' as a sexual description." However in 2009 she said that she was only attracted to girls in their 20s, and since she was now nearly 50, "I really don't want to be an old perv. So best leave it."

Burchill has spoken repeatedly and frankly of her relationship with drugs, writing that she had "put enough toot up my admittedly sizeable snout to stun the entire Colombian armed forces". She declared that "As one who suffered from chronic shyness and a low boredom threshold ... I simply can't imagine that I could have ever had any kind of social life without, let alone have reigned as Queen of the Groucho Club for a good part of the '80s and '90s."

In 1999, Burchill 'found God', and became a Lutheran and later a "self-confessed Christian Zionist". In June 2007, she announced that she would undertake a theology degree, although she subsequently decided to do voluntary work instead as a way to learn more about Christianity. She has volunteered in a local RNIB home. In June 2009 The Jewish Chronicle reported that she had become a Friend of Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue and was considering again a conversion to Judaism. Reported as having attended Shabbat services for a month, and studying Hebrew, Burchill now described herself as an "ex-christian", pointing out that she had been pondering on her conversion since the age of 25. Burchill said that "At a time of rising and increasingly vicious anti-semitism from both left and right, becoming Jewish especially appeals to me. ... Added to the fact that I admire Israel so much, it does seem to make sense – assuming of course that the Jews will have me."

She has lived in Brighton and Hove since 1995 and a book on her adopted home town titled Made In Brighton (Virgin Books) was published in April 2007. Her house in Hove was sold (and demolished for redevelopment as high-density flats) around 2005 for £1.5 million, of which she has given away £300,000, citing Andrew Carnegie: "A man who dies rich, dies shamed."