Researching Mark Thompson

After retiring, he was an assistant coach at Essendon and then at North Melbourne before becoming the senior coach of the Geelong Football Club from 2000 to 2010 and coaching them to two premierships. In November 2010, Thompson returned to as a senior assistant coach and was then appointed the senior coach for the 2014 season. He left the club at the end of 2014.

On 2 May 2018, he was charged with seven counts of drug trafficking and possession. He was released on $20,000 bail to appear in court at a later date. He was later cleared of trafficking but convicted of possession.

Thompson graduated from Logan County High School in Russellville, Kentucky and he then attended the University of Kentucky. In 1991, he played collegiate summer baseball with the Brewster Whitecaps of the Cape Cod Baseball League.

Standing at tall and 205 pounds (one source has him at 213), Thompson was selected by the Colorado Rockies 65th overall in the second round of the 1992 draft. In his first two minor league seasons, he was an effective pitcher, posting a record of 14–6.

He spent less than three seasons in the minors before making his big league debut on July 26, against the San Diego Padres. He earned the win in that game, but his overall earned run average in his rookie season (which consisted of two games) was 9.00.

He spent most of the rest of his career bouncing between the majors and minors. He spent only one season entirely in the majors-, when he posted a 9–11 record with a 5.30 ERA. He was ninth in the league in shutouts that year (with one), but he was also ninth in runs allowed (100) and fourth in hit batsmen (13).

He finished his major league career with an 18–24 record, with a 5.74 ERA. He struck out 198 and walked 161 in 337 innings pitched.

He had a .154 batting average in 104 career at bats, with the highlight of his batting career being the home run he hit off of Kent Bottenfield in a game. He appeared in one postseason game in his career, pitching a perfect inning for the save in the 1995 National League Division Series. He played his final major league game on July 27, .

He stuck around in the minors until 2003, when he finished his career with the independent Long Island Ducks.

In 2006, he was the pitching coach for the Casper Rockies.

Thompson in the 2010s has worked in a variety of professional positions in his native Kentucky, serving among other things as a representative for the school memorabilia company Jostens.

The White War. Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 (2008) is the first comprehensive narrative history in English of the part played by Italy in World War I. It was selected as Book of the Week by The Guardian newspaper, and hailed there as "magnificent ... original, masterly and definitive."

Forging War (1999) is an account of the media manipulation that took place before and during the Wars of Yugoslav Succession.

A Paper House (1992) is a political travelogue which describes the federal republic of Yugoslavia upon the brink of dissolution.

Thompson has also edited, with Louis Mackay, Something in the Wind: Politics after Chernobyl (1988), and has translated fiction from French, Italian and Croatian.

His CV includes stints as the head of media analysis for the biggest peacekeeping mission mounted by the United Nations (UNPROFOR), in 1994 and 1995; the first political officer to serve with the UN's smallest peacekeeping mission (UNMOP) in 1997; the spokesman and head of media affairs for the mission to Croatia of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in 1998 and 1999; and the Balkans Program Director of the International Crisis Group (ICG) in 2000 and 2001.

In 2015, Thompson took up a position as Reader in Modern History at the University of East Anglia (half time). He lives in Oxford, where he supervises a small number of undergraduate and graduate students at the Faculty of History. Thompson is an alumnus of Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood.

Mark Thompson was born on Wearside in 1812. He was a keen amateur painter as a young man, while working in Sunderland as a general agent. He is believed to have taken instruction from several of the resident artists there. He did not become a professional artist until his late forties, becoming well known as painter of local scenes. Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens was the first local authority museum outside London to be established following the Museums Act of 1846. Its first recorded fine art acquisition was a commission by the Sunderland to Mark Thompson, who was paid 30 guineas to record the opening of the new South Dock in 1850. This may be the first occasion in which a town council anywhere in the United Kingdom commissioned a painting.

Thompson moved to nearby Bishopswearmouth where he lived until his death in 1875. Most of Thompson's work arose from commissions from the local landed gentry for whom he executed many fine landscapes and topographical views, often recording the fine period country houses of the area for their owners. Thompson's work was highly prized by his patrons, largely because his style is similar to that of Thomas Sidney Cooper the famous painter of pastoral landscapes. Art critic Nigel Rhodes described Thompson as using "gentle, earth-toned palettes, with a natural sense of composition and a light, skilful technique." Thompson exhibited his first works in London through the British Institution in 1865 and 1866, with pastoral landscapes, "The Trees above' Middleton" and “Sheep Walk, Cronkley Craggs,Teesdale".