Trivia

Studied history at the University of Amsterdam.

Works as a journalist.

From 1968 on, he worked for De Volkskrant as a columnist.

His father was office clerk.

In 1952, Blokker became student reporter for the Dutch newspaper Het Parool. After a while, Simon Carmiggelt asked him to write film reviews.

On January 30, 2002 Blokker wrote in the Volkskrant: Pim Fortuyn has definitely become the Mussolini, the Duce, of the twenty-first century and people will have to look for a reliable hiding place. The previous Duce took twenty-three years to hang upside down from a petrol pump on the Swiss border. The murder of Fortuyn a few months later gave that sentence a sour aftertaste, in which Blokker was accused of having helped in the demonization of Fortuyn.

In 1954 he became film critic at Algemeen Handelsblad. At the art section of the news paper, he met important Dutch writers like Henk Hofland and Harry Mulisch.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he was seen as the voice of the intellectual left, specialized in satirical pieces about politics, current affairs and whatever was fashionable with the left-wing readers of the newspaper.

Between 1978 and 1983, he was adjunct editor in chief at the newspaper De Volkskrant. He wrote the column until 2006, when a conflict forced him to leave the newspaper. He continued his column for nrc.next.

He grew up in a social liberal family.

In 1944, after getting his gymnasium-alpha diploma, he went on to study Neerlandistiek and history. He never completed them.

At the age of seven, he and his father weekly visited the Cineac theatre for the Polygoon newsreel.

Blokker was also a screenwriter, who wrote the scripts for films like Fanfare by Bert Haanstra (1958) and Makkers Staakt uw Wild Geraas by Fons Rademakers (1960) and Monsieur Hawarden (1969).

In 1950, Blokker made his debut as a novelist with the novelle Séjour, for which he won the Reina Prinsen Geerligs Award. Two more novels followed, Bij dag en ontij (1952) and Parijs, dode stad (1954).

At the broadcasting organisation, VPRO, he became editor in chief. He was partly responsible for the revolutionary course that organisation took. He also provided VPRO's documentaries with commentary.