He was born in Dursley, Gloucestershire, the second of four sons of Raymond and (Olivia) Beryl Wapshott. After attending Dursley County Primary School he won a Gloucester Foundation scholarship to Rendcomb College, Cirencester. He graduated in politics from the University of York in 1973. He is married to the author and academic Louise Nicholson (1954- ), an expert on the culture of India. He has two sons, William (1988- ) and Oliver (1990- ).

After joining the Scotsman as a graduate trainee in 1973, based in Edinburgh, in 1976 he moved to London to join the staff of The Times, working first in editor William Rees-Mogg's department as a letters page editor, then became a features editor during which time he wrote a series of long form profiles of politicians and artistic figures, among them the Labour leader Michael Foot, the heir apparent to the Labour leadership, Peter Shore, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Paddy Ashdown, playwrights Alan Bennett and Dennis Potter, and actors Dirk Bogarde and Alec Guinness. When Kenneth Thomson sold the paper to Rupert Murdoch, who installed Harry Evans as editor, Wapshott set up a weekly listings section, Preview.

In 1983 he moved to The Observer as features editor and founded a new weekly color magazine, Section 5. In 1987 he succeeded the novelist Robert Harris as political editor and reported the final days of Margaret Thatcher as Conservative leader. He was the first to report on the early life of John Major, the surprise successor to Thatcher, and correctly predicted his unlikely rise with a timely profile that revealed that the family of the new prime minister had shared a landing with prostitutes, that his father had been a tight rope walker and latterly a maker of concrete garden gnomes, and that, during an extended period of unemployment, he had been beaten to a job as a bus conductor by a West Indian woman.

In 1992, Wapshott returned to The Times to transform the lacklustre Saturday Review section into The Times Magazine, published each Saturday. On the strength of its success and a sharp improvement in Saturday sales he was made Saturday editor of the paper and added a number of separate sections that rivalled the heavyweight Sunday newspapers. As other papers were quick to follow suit, Wapshott is credited with transforming the Saturday newspaper market.

In 2001, he was appointed North America Correspondent of The Times, based in New York. He arrived three weeks before the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, but had returned briefly to London and was aboard the QE2 en route to New York when the Twin Towers fell. In 2005 he began writing business features and news stories for The Sunday Telegraph and the following year joined The New York Sun as national and foreign editor, writing a well regarded weekly political column.

Current Work

He has become a regular guest on MSNBC, Fox News, and the Charlie Rose Show and a contributor on American matters to The New Statesman. In 2008 he was invited by Tina Brown to help launch The Daily Beast and was appointed Senior Editor. In 2009 he became an adjunct professor at The New School, New York, teaching short biographies and profiles.