Editing Clive Ponting (section)

{{Short description|British civil servant and historian (1946–2020)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2020}}
{{Use British English|date=May 2012}}
{{Infobox person
| honorific_prefix   = 
| name               = Clive Ponting
| image              = <!-- filename only, no "File:" or "Image:" prefix, and no enclosing [[brackets]] -->
| caption            = 
| birth_name         = Clive Sheridan Ponting
| birth_date         = {{birth date|1946|4|13|df=y}} 
| birth_place        = [[Bristol]], England, UK
| death_date         = {{death date and age|2020|7|28|1946|4|13|df=y}}
| death_place        = [[Kelso, Scottish Borders|Kelso]], Scotland, UK
| nationality        = British
| occupation         = Civil servant
| known_for          = The ''General Belgrano'' papers
| notable_works      = ''The Right to Know: The Inside Story of the Belgrano Affair''
| criminal_charge    = Section 2 [[Official Secrets Act 1911]] (not guilty)<ref>BBC, On this day, 16 February 1985, Falklands' row civil servant resigns</ref>
| criminal_penalty   = 
| criminal_status    = 
| spouse             = {{ubl|{{marriage|Katherine Hannan|1969|end = divorced}}|{{marriage|Sally Fletcher|1973|end = divorced}}|{{marriage|Laura Young|1997|end = divorced}}|{{marriage|Diane Johnson||March 2020|end = died}}}}
}}
'''Clive Sheridan Ponting''' (13 April 1946 &ndash; 28 July 2020)<ref name=RNTp14>Richard Norton-Taylor, "The Ponting Affair", Cecil Woolf, London, 1985, p. 14.</ref><ref name="times">{{cite news|url=https://www.thetimes.com/uk/article/clive-ponting-obituary-6d6lq5nzv|title=Clive Ponting obituary|website=[[The Times]]|date=1 August 2020|access-date=5 August 2020}}</ref><ref name=guardobit/> was a senior British civil servant and historian. In 1984, he leaked classified documents about the [[Falklands War#Sinking of ARA General Belgrano|sinking of the ARA ''General Belgrano'']] in the [[Falklands War]] in 1982, which showed that government statements about the sinking were untrue. He was prosecuted under the [[Official Secrets Act]], but argued that his actions were in the public interest, and was acquitted.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/16/newsid_2545000/2545907.stm|title=1985: Falklands' row civil servant resigns|date=16 February 1985|work=BBC News}}</ref> At the time of his resignation from the civil service in 1985, he was a [[Civil Service (United Kingdom)#Grading schemes|Grade 5 (assistant secretary)]], earning £23,000 per year (£70,214 in 2020).

He later wrote a number of books on British and world history. These included a ''Green History of the World'' (1991), which was revised as ''A New Green History of the World'' in 2007, and a biography of [[Winston Churchill]] (1994) and ''[[1940: Myth and Reality]]'' (1990).