Paxman was born in Leeds. His father, Keith Paxman, served in the North Atlantic Fleet. His mother, Joan, born 1920, was a housewife. Paxman is the eldest of four children and has two brothers, one of whom, Giles, is the British Ambassador to Spain (having previously held the same post in Mexico), and a sister, Jenny, a producer at BBC Radio.

He was brought up in Yorkshire and Peopleton, Worcestershire. He attended Malvern College from 1964 to 1968, Charterhouse School and read English at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he edited the undergraduate newspaper Varsity. While at Cambridge, Paxman was briefly a member of the Labour Club.

Paxman was the subject in January 2006 of an episode of the BBC genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?. The documentary concluded him to be descended from one Roger Packsman, a 14th century politician (to use a pointedly ironical anachronism) from Suffolk who had changed his name to Paxman (man of peace) to impress "the electorate." His maternal grandmother was born in Glasgow, Scotland. The programme generated much pre-publicity by displaying the usually pitiless Paxman teary-eyed on camera when informed that his impoverished great-grandmother Mary Mackay's poor relief had been revoked because she'd had a child out of wedlock.

Journalism

Paxman joined the BBC's graduate trainee programme in 1972. He started in local radio, at BBC Radio Brighton. He moved to Belfast, where he reported the Troubles. He moved to London in 1977. Two years later he transferred from the Tonight programme to Panorama. After five years reporting from places like Beirut, Uganda and Central America, he read the Six O'Clock News for two years, before moving to BBC1's Breakfast Time programme.

Newsnight

Paxman became a presenter of Newsnight in 1989.

On 13 May 1997 he spoke with Michael Howard in what became the programme's most notorious interview. Howard, who had been Home Secretary until thirteen days earlier, had held a meeting with Derek Lewis, head of the Prison Service, about the possible dismissal of the governor of Parkhurst Prison, John Marriott. Howard, having given evasive answers, was asked by Paxman the same question "Did you threaten to overrule [Lewis]?" a total of twelve times in succession (14 if the first two inquiries worded somewhat differently and some time before the succession of 12). Howard did not give a direct answer, instead repeatedly saying that he "did not overrule him", and ignoring the "threaten" part of the question. Later, during a 20th anniversary edition of Newsnight, Paxman told Howard that he had simply been trying to prolong the interview since the next item in the running order wasn't ready. In 2004 Paxman raised the subject again with Howard, by then leader of the Conservative Party. This time, Howard laughed it off, saying that he had not threatened to overrule the head of the Prison Service. Secret Home Office papers released in 2005 under the Freedom of Information Act failed to corroborate this.

In 1998, Denis Halliday, a director of United Nations humanitarian aid, resigned his post in Iraq, describing the effects of his own organisation's sanctions as genocide. Paxman asked Halliday in a Newsnight interview, "Aren't you just an apologist for Saddam Hussein?"

Later that year Paxman won a Royal Television Society award.

In 2003, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair opted to make the case for the invasion of Iraq via questions from a TV studio audience, mediated by Paxman. The programme is chiefly remembered for the fact that Paxman asked Blair if he and President Bush prayed together. Blair replied, "No, Jeremy. We don't pray together."

During the 2005 UK General Election some viewers complained to the BBC that Paxman's robust questioning of party leaders had been rude and aggressive. There was criticism of his five-in-the-morning results interview with George Galloway. Referring to Oona King, whom Galloway had just defeated, Paxman asked more than once whether he was proud of having got rid of "one of the very few black women in Parliament." An exasperated Galloway cut the interview short, and among subsequent critics was the defeated MP herself. Paxman later made a taped guest appearance on the Celebrity Big Brother reality TV show challenging Galloway to a follow-up session "with or without your leotard" (Galloway, a Big Brother contestant at the time, had in an earlier much-publicised stunt during the show dressed up in a leotard).

Paxman's brusque manner is not restricted to political interviews. When Newsnight's editor decided to broadcast brief weather forecasts instead of financial reports he openly ridiculed the decision: "And for tonight's weather - it's April, what do you expect?". The financial reports were re-introduced after a few weeks. In a Radio Times poll of 3,000 people in 2006, he was voted the fourth "scariest" TV celebrity.

Other TV work

Paxman has presented the weekly TV programme review Did You See?, You Decide and, most notably, since 1994, University Challenge, bringing him the distinction of "longest-serving current quizmaster on British TV." He presented on BBC America and BBC World a weekly compilation of highlights from the domestic edition of Newsnight from February 2008 until shortly after the 2008 U.S. election, when the American programme was cancelled. The programme is still aired on BBC World.

In April 2006 The Sun claimed that Paxman earned £800,000 for his Newsnight job and £240,000 for presenting University Challenge, bringing his TV earnings to a yearly total of £1,040,000. This was one of a series of BBC salary leaks in the tabloid press that prompted an internal BBC investigation.

Beginning on 15 February 2009, his four part documentary The Victorians aired on BBC One. The series explores Victorian art and culture.

Paxman and the BBC

While John Birt was Director General of the BBC, the British press from time to time reported Paxman's criticism of his boss. The former, suspected at first to be an outsider brought in by a hostile government to supervise the BBC's break-up and ultimate sell-off, in turn publicly questioned the confrontational approach, as he saw it, of certain TV and radio interviewers. This was seen at the time as coded criticism of Paxman himself and of his BBC colleague John Humphrys.

On 24 August 2007 Paxman delivered the McTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. In it he was critical of much of contemporary TV in Britain. He expressed concern that as a consequence of recent production scandals the medium was rapidly losing public trust. Speaking of prime minister Tony Blair's criticism of the mass media at the time he left office, Paxman asserted that often press and broadcasting may be "oppositional" in relation to the government of the day this could only benefit democracy. Those Reithian goals, to "inform, educate and entertain," still remained valid. Paxman took the opportunity to dismiss as "inaccurate" the attribution to himself of the oft-quoted "Why is this lying bastard lying to me?" as the supposed dominant thought in his mind when interviewing senior politicians. He called on the television industry to rediscover a sense of purpose.

Books

Paxman's first book, A Higher Form of Killing (1982), written with then BBC colleague and friend Robert Harris, arose out of an edition of the Panorama programme they'd made together on biological and chemical warfare. In a revised 2002 version they asserted that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons. In 1985 Paxman published Through the Volcanoes: A Central American Journey, an eyewitness account of people, places and politics. Friends in High Places: Who Runs Britain? (1991) was the result of numerous detailed interviews with the powerful or highly influential, what used to be called The Establishment. Paxman's The English: A Portrait of a People (1999) was not the first of his books to be greeted with wide critical acclaim. The Political Animal: An Anatomy (2003), again based on extensive interviews, examines the motivations and methods of those who constitute the author's professional prey: Westminster politicians. The otherwise-republican Paxman's On Royalty, which entailed the cooperation of Britain's royal family, became by the time it was published in 2006, to his own surprise and somewhat to the surprise of others, a defence of the country's constitutional monarchy. His recent books have each been big sellers. His most recent book, The Victorians: Britain through the Paintings of the Age, was accompanied by a BBC documentary series. It was later noted that most of this book was not in fact written by Paxman at all but by the Irish writer Neil Hegarty. Paxman was praised by several academics and figures in the publishing industry for admitting Hegarty's substantial contributions in the book's acknowledgements. Paxman stated that since all television is a "collaborative exercise," it was "rather silly for this book - which accompanies a television series - to appear with only one name on the cover."

Radio

Paxman presented the flagship BBC Radio 4 show Start the Week from 1998 to 2002.

Awards and honours

In 1996 Paxman received BAFTA's Richard Dimbleby Award for "outstanding presenter in the factual arena." Two years later he won the Royal Television Society's Interviewer of the Year Award for his somewhat notorious Newsnight interview (see above) with Michael Howard, as well as the Broadcasting Press Guild's award for best "non-acting" performer. He got another Richard Dimbleby Award in 2000 and was nominated for the award in 2001 and 2002. He won the Royal Television Society TV journalism presenter of the year award in 2002 and 2007.

Paxman was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Leeds in the summer of 1999 and in December that year received an honorary degree from the University of Bradford. In 2006 he received an honorary doctorate from the Open University. Among those at the ceremony were three members of the Open University's 1999 University Challenge team. Paxman is a Fellow by special election of St. Edmund Hall, and an Honorary Fellow of his alma mater, St. Catharine's College, Cambridge.

Paxman lives with his significant other Elizabeth Ann Clough in Stonor, Oxfordshire. They have three children: Jessica, and twins Victoria and Jack. He supports Leeds United, and enjoys fly fishing in his leisure time. He is vice-chairman of the Wild Trout Trust conservation charity. He is also a patron of the charity Sustrans.

When, in his twenties, Paxman unsuccessfully applied for the vacant editorship of the venerable Labour-supporting weekly The New Statesman, he said he considered himself a socialist. He had previously stood as a Communist candidate in school elections. More recently, he has been described as "the archetypal floating voter", and Jon Snow once said that Paxman's greatest strength was being "not very political". Paxman himself has stated:

"I do understand we have to have a government, and I do firmly believe in democracy. So it's not true to say I'm not a political person. I am a political person. But I'm not a party political person. I don't believe there is a monopoly of wisdom in any one party. I suppose as one gets older - I would have described it at the age of 21 as the process of selling out, but another way of looking at it is to say, actually, the world is not a very simple place, and that as you get older simple-minded solutions seem less attractive."

Paxman has been publicly criticised over his and his partner's home help arrangements. Having advertised on a Romanian website, they hired two people at below minimum wage without a written contract. While this is not illegal in the UK if employees live in, Paxman, known for grilling interviewees on workers' rights issues, was criticised when his employees went public, claiming to have been paid "the bare minimum".

Paxman's controversial remarks about the Scots have provoked anger at parliamentary level. Twenty Scottish Members of Parliament signed a House of Commons motion in March 2005 condemning him for comparing supposed Scottish dominance at Westminster to British rule in India: a "Scottish Raj" was running the UK, said Paxman. The row came right after a Cabinet minister had complained that the Newsnight host had been offensive about his Glasgow accent. Paxman's response served further to fan the flames. In an introduction to a new edition of Chambers Dictionary in August 2008 Paxman labelled the work of Scotland's national poet Robert Burns as "sentimental doggerel." Paxman himself is quarter-Scottish through his maternal grandmother, a fact which he stated has led to many of his comments being misunderstood as he regards the Scots "with affection".

Paxman has come under fire from critics of US foreign policy, including award-winning fellow journalist John Pilger, for his involvement with the British-American Project which, according to The Guardian, "even its supporters joke that it's funded by the CIA." Fellow-members include Paul Wolfowitz and Diana Negroponte, wife of John Negroponte. Paxman is pictured prominently on the organisation's homepage saying: "A marvellous way of meeting a varied cross-section of transatlantic friends."