Ian Birrell

Last updated

Ian Birrell
NationalityBritish
Alma mater University of Aberdeen
OccupationJournalist

Ian Birrell is a British journalist and former speechwriter to Prime Minister David Cameron. [1] He has been a columnist at several newspapers including the i and UnHerd . [2] [3] From 1998 to 2010, Birrell was deputy editor-in-chief of The Independent .

Contents

Education

Birrell was educated at Ampleforth College, [4] a Roman Catholic boarding independent school for boys (now coeducational), in the village of Ampleforth in North Yorkshire, followed by the University of Aberdeen. [4]

Journalism

Birrell has reported as a foreign correspondent for British newspapers from Egypt, Haiti, Iraq, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Syria, and others. [5] [6] [7]

Birrell is a campaigner for the rights of people with learning disabilities and autism who are locked up in British psychiatric institutions. He has investigated and written extensively on this issue and has received several awards for this work. [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]

Birrell reported on the case of 12-year-old Billy Caldwell from Northern Ireland who needed medical cannabis for his epilepsy and was forced to go overseas to get it as it was illegal in Britain. The report created a scandal that forced the British government to change the law and legalize medical cannabis. [13] [14]

Television and radio

Birrell presented the BBC Panorama programme Tough Justice that featured Michael Gove [15]

Sky News All Out Politics podcast What Next for Global Britain, hosted by Adam Boulton [16]

The Andrew Marr Show [17]

Music

Birrell co-founded the charity Africa Express with musician Damon Albarn to encourage collaboration between African, Middle Eastern and Western musicians [18] Birrell was executive producer of the Africa Express albums Presents (2009) [19] and Terry's in C Mali [20] (2015).

Awards

Personal life

Birrell has a daughter, Ione, who suffers from severe epilepsy. [29]

Related Research Articles

<i>Daily Mail</i> British tabloid newspaper

The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper published in London. It was founded in 1896. As of 2020, it was the highest paid circulation newspaper in the UK. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982, a Scottish edition was launched in 1947, and an Irish edition in 2006. Content from the paper appears on the MailOnline news website, although the website is managed separately and has its own editor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Hitchens</span> English journalist and author (born 1951)

Peter Jonathan Hitchens is an English conservative author, broadcaster, journalist, and commentator. He writes for The Mail on Sunday and was a foreign correspondent reporting from both Moscow and Washington, D.C. Peter Hitchens has contributed to The Spectator, The American Conservative, The Guardian, First Things, Prospect, and the New Statesman. His books include The Abolition of Britain, The Rage Against God, The War We Never Fought and The Phoney Victory.

The Orwell Prize is a British prize for political writing. The Prize is awarded by The Orwell Foundation, an independent charity governed by a board of trustees. Four prizes are awarded each year: one each for a fiction and non-fiction book on politics, one for journalism and one for "Exposing Britain's Social Evils" ; between 2009 and 2012, a fifth prize was awarded for blogging. In each case, the winner is the short-listed entry which comes closest to George Orwell's own ambition to "make political writing into an art".

Liam James Halligan is a British economist, journalist, author and broadcaster. He is currently economics and business editor at GB News.

Chris McGreal is a reporter for The Guardian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johann Hari</span> Scottish writer

Johann Eduard Hari is a Scottish 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, the effect of technology on attention span, and anti-obesity medication, which have attracted criticism for inaccuracies and misrepresentation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carole Cadwalladr</span> British investigative journalist (born 1969)

Carole Jane Cadwalladr is a British author, investigative journalist and features writer. She is a features writer for The Observer and formerly worked at The Daily Telegraph. Cadwalladr rose to international prominence in 2018 for her role in exposing the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal for which she was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, alongside The New York Times reporters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amnesty International</span> International non-governmental organisation

Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organisation says it has more than ten million members and supporters around the world. The stated mission of the organisation is to campaign for "a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments." The organisation has played a notable role on human rights issues due to its frequent citation in media and by world leaders.

<i>The Guardian</i> British national daily newspaper

The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian, before it changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers, The Observer and The Guardian Weekly, The Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust Limited. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of The Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of The Guardian free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for The Guardian the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in its journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK.

Kate Clanchy MBE is a British poet, freelance writer and teacher.

<i>i</i> (newspaper) British daily newspaper

The i is a British national newspaper published in London by Daily Mail and General Trust and distributed across the United Kingdom. It is aimed at "readers and lapsed readers" of all ages and commuters with limited time, and was originally launched in 2010 as a sister paper to The Independent. It was later acquired by Johnston Press in 2016 after The Independent shifted to a digital-only model. The i came under the control of JPIMedia a day after Johnston Press filed for administration on 16 November 2018. The paper and its website were bought by the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) on 29 November 2019, for £49.6 million. On 6 December 2019 the Competition and Markets Authority served an initial enforcement order on DMGT and DMG Media Limited, requiring the paper to be run separately pending investigation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laurie Penny</span> English journalist, columnist and author (born 1986)

Laurie Penny is a British journalist and writer. Penny has written articles for publications including The Guardian,The New York Times and Salon. Penny is a contributing editor at the New Statesman and the author of several books on feminism, and they have also written for American television shows including The Haunting of Bly Manor and The Nevers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Hughes (journalist)</span> British journalist (1972–2021)

Sarah Hughes, was a British journalist, known to her readers by the pseudonym 'Lady Sarah'. She wrote for several British national newspapers including The Telegraph, The Independent, inews, and the Observer and Guardian, in which she published regular reviews of television series including Line of Duty, Peaky Blinders, Indian Summers and the Game of Thrones.

Ed West is a British author, journalist and blogger. He was previously the deputy editor of UnHerd, deputy editor of The Catholic Herald and a columnist for The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator. He began his career with the lads’ mag Nuts Magazine, and has also written for the Evening Standard, The Guardian, The i, The Week, and Spiked.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Budd</span> British music industry executive

Stephen Budd is a British music industry executive based in London. He is a director of artist and producer management company Stephen Budd Music Ltd, the OneFest Festival, the Africa Express project and is the co-founder of the NH7 Weekender festivals in India. He is a recognised TV commentator on music industry issues, regularly appearing on a variety of British TV news shows. In June 2017 he completed his 3-year term as co-chairman of the MMF. He is a co-executive producer of Amnesty International and Sofar Sounds' ‘Give A Home’ global concert series. His current management roster includes the artists Dry The River and Nubiyan Twist, along with the record producers Rob Ellis, Tore Johansson, Valgeir Sigurdsson, Nick Zinner, Mike Hedges, and Arthur Verocai.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Bloodworth (journalist)</span> English journalist and writer

James Bloodworth is an English journalist and writer. He has authored two full length books, also writing articles for newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian. Much of Bloodworth's work concerns the struggles of working class people, yet he has been praised by both sides of the political spectrum. He lives in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Ball (journalist)</span> British journalist and author

James Ball is a British journalist and author. He has worked for The Grocer, The Guardian, WikiLeaks, BuzzFeed, The New European and The Washington Post and is the author of several books. He is the recipient of several awards for journalism and was a member of The Guardian team that won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism.

Africa Express is a UK-based non-profit organization that facilitates cross-cultural collaborations between musicians in African, Middle Eastern, and Western countries. It seeks to help African musicians break beyond the perceived stigmas and prejudices of the term world music, while presenting a positive impression of Africa to counter against common media images of war, famine, and disease. Notable events that Africa Express has been involved in include performances at the 2012 Olympics, the Glastonbury Festival, the BBC Electric Proms, Denmark's Roskilde Festival, a tour of Syrian refugee musicians, and concerts in such places as Mali, the Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, and France.

<i>UnHerd</i> British online magazine featuring politics and culture

UnHerd is a British news and opinion website founded in July 2017, which describes itself as a platform for slow journalism.

References

  1. ↑ "Ian Birrell". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
  2. ↑ "Ian Birrell - inews.co.uk". inews.co.uk. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
  3. ↑ "Ian Birrell, a writer for UnHerd". UnHerd. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
  4. 1 2 Birrell, Ian (22 October 2005). "The hell I share with David Cameron". The Spectator (political magazine). Retrieved 24 April 2021.
  5. ↑ Birrell, Ian (11 April 2019). "The Arab Spring is still unfurling". Unherd. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
  6. ↑ Birrell, Ian (13 February 2011). "We help the dictators to steal". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
  7. ↑ Birrell, Ian (26 August 2012). "Our image of Africa is hopelessly obsolete". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
  8. ↑ "'It is devastating to see how hopeless she is': Detaining people with special needs is inhumane". inews.co.uk. 29 November 2020. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
  9. ↑ Birrell, Ian (12 July 2020). "'They are making people worse': The scandal of imprisoning patients with autism". inews.co.uk. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
  10. ↑ Birrell, Ian (15 January 2021). "Lockdown has exposed Britain's callous indifference towards disabled people". The Telegraph. ISSN   0307-1235 . Retrieved 22 February 2021.
  11. ↑ Birrell, Ian (21 October 2019). "A teenager with autism was caged like a dangerous creature. When will the Government act?". inews.co.uk. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
  12. ↑ Birrell, Ian (12 February 2020). "Matt Hancock facing legal challenge over 'repeated failures' in autism care". inews.co.uk. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
  13. ↑ McRedmond, Finn (22 June 2018). "How the government's cannabis policy went up in smoke". Reaction. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
  14. ↑ Monaghan, Mark; Wincup, Emma; Hamilton, Ian (2021). "Scandalous decisions: explaining shifts in UK medicinal cannabis policy". Addiction. 116 (7): 1925–1933. doi:10.1111/add.15350. ISSN   1360-0443. PMID   33404120. S2CID   230784833.
  15. ↑ "Panorama, Season 63, Episode 39, Tough Justice: Texas Style | Alexander Street, a ProQuest Company". search.alexanderstreet.com. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
  16. ↑ "All Out Politics podcast: What next for 'Global Britain?'". Sky News. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
  17. ↑ "Andrew Marr Show newspaper review". BBC News. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
  18. ↑ "Africa Express (organization)", Wikipedia, 14 February 2021, retrieved 22 February 2021
  19. ↑ Africa Express – Africa Express Presents... (2009, CD) , retrieved 22 February 2021
  20. ↑ Africa Express – Terry Riley's In C Mali (2015, CD) , retrieved 22 February 2021
  21. ↑ "Ian Birrell". Human Rights Foundation. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
  22. ↑ "SoE Press Awards 2015 – the winners". www.inpublishing.co.uk. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
  23. ↑ Guardian Staff (23 March 2016). "Press Awards for 2015: full list of winners". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
  24. ↑ "National Press Awards Winners – Society of Editors".
  25. ↑ "Ian Birrell , Author at inews.co.uk". inews.co.uk. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
  26. ↑ Mayhew, Freddy (3 April 2019). "Times titles win big at Society of Editors' Press Awards". Press Gazette. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
  27. ↑ "Amnesty Media Awards 2019 winners announced". www.amnesty.org.uk. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
  28. ↑ "Ian Birrell | The Orwell Foundation". www.orwellfoundation.com. Retrieved 22 February 2021.
  29. ↑ Birrell, Ian (14 October 2019). "How my daughter disrupted my politics". UnHerd. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
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.