Brian Viner

Last updated

Brian Viner (born 25 October 1961) is an English journalist and author.

Viner was born to an unmarried mother at the now demolished Royal Northern Hospital, London, and was adopted by a couple in Southport, Merseyside when a few weeks old. He met his birth parents for the first time in the 1990s.[ citation needed ]

He was educated at King George V School, Southport, then at St Andrews University. In 1985/6 he was a Robert T Jones Memorial Scholar at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

From 1994 to 1999 Viner wrote for the Mail on Sunday . In 1997 he won a What the Papers Say Award for his work as the paper's television critic. He was a columnist on The Independent from January 1999 to December 2011, and then turned freelance, writing for numerous national newspapers, including the Daily Mail , The Mail on Sunday , the Financial Times , The Sunday Telegraph , The Sunday Times , The Independent , The Guardian , the Daily Mirror and the Sunday Express .

At The Independent, he was principally a sports writer, and "The Brian Viner Interview" with a well-known sporting figure became the longest-running weekly interview in British newspaper journalism. He has been shortlisted multiple times as Interviewer of the Year in the British Press Awards and the Sports Journalism Awards. In October 2013, Viner became film critic of the Daily Mail, succeeding Christopher Tookey.

He is the author of seven books, all non-fiction. Viner's most recently published book, "Looking For The Toffees", is an account of his teen years following Everton FC, in which he goes in search of his childhood heroes. Prior to that, he wrote The Good, The Dad and The Ugly: The Trials of Fatherhood, published in May 2013. Of his earlier books, Tales of the Country and its sequel The Pheasants' Revolt recount the story of his, and his family's, move from London to Herefordshire. [1] Ali, Pele, Lillee & Me: A Personal Odyssey Through the Sporting Seventies recalls his childhood as a sports enthusiast, [2] and Nice To See It, To See It Nice: The Seventies in Front of the Telly is similarly a memoir, but about television. His book Cream Teas, Traffic Jams and Sunburn: The Great British Holiday was voted Travel Book of the Year in The 2011 British Travel Press Awards. In 2010 Tales of the Country was adapted for the stage by the Pentabus Theatre Company. [1]

He is married to the novelist Jane Sanderson; the couple have three children.

Related Research Articles

Amanda Craig is a British novelist, critic and journalist. She was a recipient of the Catherine Pakenham Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barry Norman</span> British film critic

Barry Leslie Norman was a British film critic, television presenter and journalist. He presented the BBC's cinema review programme, Film..., from 1972 to 1998.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sports journalism</span> Form of journalism that reports on sporting topics and competitions

Sports journalism is a form of writing that reports on matters pertaining to sporting topics and competitions. Sports journalism started in the early 1980s when it was targeted to the social elite and transitioned into an integral part of the news business with newspapers having dedicated sports sections. The increased popularity of sports amongst the middle and lower class led to the more coverage of sports content in publications. The appetite for sports resulted in sports-only media such as Sports Illustrated and ESPN. There are many different forms of sports journalism, ranging from play-by-play and game recaps to analysis and investigative journalism on important developments in the sport. Technology and the internet age has massively changed the sports journalism space as it is struggling with the same problems that the broader category of print journalism is struggling with, mainly not being able to cover costs due to falling subscriptions. New forms of internet blogging and tweeting in the current millennium have pushed the boundaries of sports journalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Boyd (writer)</span> Scottish novelist, short story writer, and screen writer

William Andrew Murray Boyd is a Scottish novelist, short story writer and screenwriter.

Brian Christopher Moore is an English former rugby union footballer. He played as a hooker, and is a rugby presenter and pundit for BBC Sport, Talksport and Love Sport Radio. He qualified as a Rugby Football Union referee in 2010.

The Press Awards, formerly the British Press Awards, is an annual ceremony that celebrates the best of British journalism.

Henry Winter is an English sports journalist. He was most recently the Chief Football Writer for The Times, and previously a Football Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph.

The Sunday Times is South Africa's biggest Sunday newspaper. Established in 1906, the Sunday Times is distributed all over South Africa and in neighbouring countries such as Lesotho, Botswana, and Eswatini.

Philip Michael Hensher FRSL is an English novelist, critic and journalist.

Trent Gardiner Frayne was a Canadian sportswriter whose career stretched over 60 years. Pierre Berton described Frayne as “likely Canada's greatest sportswriter ever."

Paul Michael Dacre is an English journalist and the former long-serving editor of the British tabloid the Daily Mail. He is also editor-in-chief of DMG Media, which publishes the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday, the free daily tabloid Metro, the MailOnline website, and other titles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johann Hari</span> British-Swiss journalist

Johann Eduard Hari is a British-Swiss writer and journalist who wrote for The Independent and The Huffington Post. In 2011, Hari was suspended from The Independent and later resigned, after admitting to plagiarism and fabrications dating back to 2001 and making malicious edits to the Wikipedia pages of journalists who had criticised his conduct. He has since written books on the topics of depression, the war on drugs, and the effect of technology on attention span.

David Kenny is a journalist, broadcaster, best-selling author and songwriter living in Dublin, Ireland.

Desmond Cahill is an Irish sports presenter and commentator with national broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann. From 2009 to 2022, Cahill presented RTÉ television's GAA highlights programme The Sunday Game.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award</span> Award for athletes, presented by BBC

The BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award is the main award of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year ceremony, which takes place each December. The winner is the sportsperson, judged by a public vote, to have achieved the most that year. The recipient must either be British or reside and play a significant amount of their sport in the United Kingdom. The winner is selected from a pre-determined shortlist. The most recent award-winner is footballer Mary Earps, who won the 2023 award.

Jason O'Toole is an Irish author, filmmaker, and playwright. He is a former print and magazine editor, journalist and Sunday newspaper columnist.

Hatchet Job of the Year was a British journalism award given annually from 2012 to 2014 to "the writer of the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the past twelve months". It was awarded by The Omnivore, a review aggregator website, with the aim to "raise the profile of professional critics and to promote integrity and wit in literary journalism". The prize was a year's supply of potted shrimp.

Jonathan Northcroft is a Scottish sports journalist and author. He is currently the Chief Football Writer for The Sunday Times.

Susie Boniface is a British journalist and author who has written for several newspapers and uses the pseudonym Fleet Street Fox in her Daily Mirror column and on Twitter. She used the name Lillys Miles while writing an anonymous blog, but revealed her identity when her book Diaries of a Fleet Street Fox was published in 2013.

References

  1. 1 2 "Bringing townies’ rural dream to life Archived April 11, 2010, at the Wayback Machine ", Hereford Times, 8 April 2010, retrieved 2011-11-12
  2. ↑ "BOOK REVIEW: LIFE WITH SPORTING ICONS OF THE 70S Archived 2013-02-18 at archive.today ", iomtoday.co.im, 12 April 2007, retrieved 2011-11-12
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.