Christopher Pearson was born in Sydney on August 31, 1951, to Sue (nee Dutton), a teacher and librarian, and Bob Pearson, an Anglican priest who later worked for IBM. After the family moved to South Australia in the 1960s, Pearson attended Adelaide’s Scotch College, where he developed what he would later describe as a lifelong antipathy for sports. He later gained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Flinders University and a graduate diploma in education from the University of Adelaide.
Pearson took on the editorship of the struggling Adelaide Review in 1984 after a brief career as a sub-editor at The Advertiser, and as a tutor. The magazine was backed with modest financial support from friends he had made at college and university. It went on to become nationally recognised for the quality of its writers and range of views, assembled and edited (in hard copy) by Pearson.
Pearson was widely regarded as a political conservative, but he was happy to publish works by Labor’s Mark Latham and former South Australian Labor premier Don Dunstan, as he was to carry pieces by Mr Abbott. Later, he served on the boards of the Australian National Museum and SBS. Pearson was received into the Catholic Church a little more than a decade ago, embracing Catholicism with gusto and reading widely on doctrinal issues. He campaigned for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the 1970s and was open about his homosexuality, but remained an opponent of same-sex marriage. (Source: The Australian 20 May 2013: p3)
