Philip Jeyaretnam

Philip Antony Jeyaretnam (born 1964) is a Singaporean lawyer and novelist. He is a Senior Counsel and a former President of the Law Society of Singapore. 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. On 1 January 2011, he was appointed as managing partner of Rodyk & Davidson LLP, one of Singapore's leading law firms.

His collection of short stories, 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".First Loves and his debut novel Raffles Place Ragtime (1988) were both nominated for the Commonwealth Writers Prize (South-east Asia and the South Pacific). His second novel, Abraham's Promise (1995) won a highly commended book award from the National Book Development Council of Singapore. He was presented with the 'Young Artist of the Year' award in 1993, the Montblanc-NUS Centre for the Arts Literary Award in 1997, and a S.E.A. Write Award in 2003.