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)
Spouse	Cindy Jeyaretnam Sim (actress/teacher)
Children	Tristan, Quentin and Miranda
Parent(s)	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 and a former President of the Law Society of Singapore. He is also well known as a fiction writer. He is the son of J.B. Jeyaretnam, who was a prominent opposition politician in Singapore.

Biography

Philip received his early education at Raeburn Park School and the United World College of South East Asia in Singapore, and at the Charterhouse School in Surrey, England. He then went on to Corpus Christi College at Cambridge University, where he read Law and graduated with First Class Honours in 1986. He was admitted to the Singapore Bar in 1987, and was conferred the title of Senior Counsel in 2003.

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

In 1991, he was a Fulbright Fellowship visitor to the University of Iowa International Writers' Program and to the Harvard Law School. He was also an Adjunct Professor with the Department of Building at the National University of Singapore from July 2006 to June 2007.

He is a member of the Singapore Public Service Commission and of the SIAC Regional Panel of Arbitrators. In July 2005, Jeyaretnam was appointed as a board member of the Singapore National Kidney Foundation. He is a former President of the Law Society of Singapore, and was Chairman of the Society of Construction Law from 2002 to 2004.

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”.

He is an avid reader on subjects pertaining to history, science, anthropology and literature.

Family

He is the younger son of the late-Singaporean opposition politician, J.B. Jeyaretnam (who was the first opposition politician to be elected to Parliament in post-independence Singapore), and Margaret Walker. This Philip of Sri Lankan Tamil and English descent. His older brother, Kenneth Jeyaretnam, currently an oppsoition politician in Singapore (leading the Reform Party, which was founded by his father shortly before his death in 2008).

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