Chris Patten is Chancellor of Oxford and Newcastle Universities, and is Chairman of the International Crisis Group, which atttempts to identify and prevent potential conflicts. He is also the Co-Chair of the UK-India Round Table.
He was elected as Member of Parliament for Bath in 1979, a seat he held until April 1992. In 1983 he wrote The Tory Case, a study of Conservatism. In 1989 he became Secretary of State for the Environment, and in 1990 he was appointed Chairman of the Conservative Party.
He was made Governor of Hong Kong in 1992, a position he held until 1997, overseeing the return of Hong Kong to China. He then became Chairman of the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland set up under the Good Friday Peace Agreement, which reported in 1999.
In September 1999 he was appointed EU Commissioner for External Relations, a post he held until 2004. He oversaw many crises in the area of European foreign policy, most notably the failure of the European Union to come up with a common unified policy before the Iraq war in 2003. On leaving Brussels, he was made a life peer and took his seat in the House of Lords in 2005.
In 1998, he wrote East and West, a book on Asia and its relations with the rest of the world. His latest book What Next: Surviving The Twenty First Century was published in 2008.
He is an astute commentator and speaker on world issues with a wide range of experiences.