Philip Jeyaretnam

Philip Antony Jeyaretnam
Born	1964 Singapore
Nationality	Singapore
Education	Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; Charterhouse School; United World College of South East Asia; Raeburn Park School
Occupation	Senior Counsel
Employer	Rodyk & Davidson LLP
Known for	Young Artist Award (1993) South-East Asian Write Award (2003)
Religion	Anglican
Spouse	Cindy Jeyaretnam Sim (actress/teacher)
Children	Tristan, Quentin and Miranda
Parents	J.B. Jeyaretnam (deceased); Margaret Jeyaretnam (deceased)
Relatives	Kenneth Jeyaretnam; Harold Walker (former chairman AFC Bournemouth)

Philip Antony Jeyaretnam (born 1964) is a lawyer from Singapore. He is a Senior Counsel in Singapore, former President of the Law Society of Singapore, and a member of the Singapore Public Service Commission. He is also well known as a fiction writer. He is the younger son of the late veteran Singaporean opposition politician J.B. Jeyaretnam and Margaret Walker, and is of Sri Lankan Tamil and English descent.

The young Philip received his early education at Raeburn Park School and the United World College of South East Asia in Singapore, and the Charterhouse School in Surrey, United Kingdom. He then read law at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, and graduated with First Class Honours in 1986. He was admitted to the Singapore Bar in 1987, and was conferred the title Senior Counsel in 2003. In 1991, he was a Fulbright Fellowship visitor to the University of Iowa International Writers' Program, and the Harvard Law School. He is an avid reader on subjects pertaining to history, science, anthropology and of course, literature.

He is the president of the Singapore Law Society, and was Chairman of the Society of Construction Law from 2002 to 2004. He is also a member of the SIAC Regional Panel of Arbitrators. He was an Adjunct Professor with the Department of Building at the National University of Singapore between 1 July 2006 to 30 June 2007. On 20 July 2005, Jeyaretnam was appointed as a board member of the Singapore National Kidney Foundation.

His fiction First Loves, published in Singapore in 1987, claimed record sales on the Sunday Times bestseller book list. It won him the compliment as Singapore's "home-grown Maugham". Philip was presented with the 'Young Artist of the Year' award in 1993, and a South-East Asian Write Award in 2003.

He chairs the Board of Trustees for the nonprofit arts group the Practice Performing Arts School, founded by the late theatre doyen Kuo Pao Kun. In his view, the arts are as important as any other elements in the growth of a society. Writers, artists, composers, directors – whom he terms ‘ideas people’ – are needed for a lively arts scene and that more should be done to encourage new ideas from artists. He also called for greater support from the private sector for “the serious arts”, since the popular arts are commonly “funded by the market and community organisations”.

Book titles

• Campfire (1985)
• Evening Under Frangipani (1986)
• First Loves (1987)
• Raffles Place Ragtime (1988)
• Abraham’s Promise (1995)
• Tigers in paradise : the collected works of Philip Jeyaretnam (2004)

Articles (Non-Professional)

• Inheritance (1991) - English-written essay, subsequently translated into German in 1993.

Articles (Professional)

• Building and Construction Law, Singapore Academy of Law Annual Reviews (vols. 2000 - 2004; co-author)

External links

• http://www.postcolonialweb.org/singapore/literature/jeyaretnam/jeyaretnamov.html
• http://www.asean-coci.gov.sg/philip.htm
• http://www.bdg.nus.edu.sg/staff_bdgpj.htm