Neil Mackay

Last updated

Neil Mackay
Born1969 or 1970
County Antrim
Alma mater Queen's University Belfast
Occupation(s)Journalist, editor, author
Organization Sunday Herald
Notable work All the Little Guns Went Bang Bang (2013 book)
The War on Truth (2006 book)
The Wolf Trial (2017 book)

Neil Mackay (born 1969 or 1970) is a Northern Irish, Glasgow-based journalist, author and film maker. [1] [2]

Contents

Mackay served as the editor of the Sunday Herald from 2015 to 2018 and is the author of The War on Truth, (2006), All the Little Guns Went Bang Bang (2013), and The Wolf Trial (2017).

Early life and education

Mackay is from County Antrim, in Northern Ireland. [1] He was born in 1969or1970. [3] He grew up in The Troubles and was badly beaten at the age of 14. [3] He received a scholarship to attend Queen's University Belfast. [3]

Career

Mackay worked as a journalist in Northern Ireland, but after receiving death threats he moved to Scotland in 1996. [3] In Scotland, he initially worked for The Big Issue before taking a job at Scotland on Sunday in Edinburgh. [1] [4]

In 1999, he was part of the team that launched the Sunday Herald, where he became the editor in 2015 and served in that capacity until 2018. [1] In his role he tried to prevent Angela Haggerty from being fired, but did not succeed. [5] [6] In 2003, after a long investigation, he named a British spy who had infiltrated the Irish Republican Army. [7] [8]

In 2004, he agreed a contract to produce television documentaries, [2] subsequently producing Nazi Hate Rock: A Macintyre Investigation for the Scottish Media Group, in 2006. [9] [10]

In 2021, Mackay was the target of online abuse from the Wings over Scotland website. [11]

Views

Mackay is openly critical of religion. [12]

Books

The War on Truth

The War on Truth Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Invasion of Iraq but Your Government Wouldn’t Tell You is Mackay's 2006 account of the events that led up to the war in Iraq. It focuses on the disinformation campaign of the British government and questions the existence of democracy in the UK. [13] [14] [ better source needed ]

All the Little Guns Went Bang Bang

All the Little Guns Went Bang Bang is a 2013 social science fiction novel set during The Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1980s. It tells a tale of two youths, born to violent parents, and explores the extent to which violence is learned by children, from their parents and community. [15] [16]

The Wolf Trial

The Wolf Trial is a 2017 historical crime novel about a werewolf trial in 16th-century Germany, which is used as a subtext to question if the god in Christianity is an evil or kind deity. [17]

Awards

Personal life

Mackay lives with post-traumatic stress disorder. [3] He has two daughters. [4]

Related Research Articles

<i>Daily Mirror</i> British daily tabloid newspaper

The Daily Mirror is a British national daily tabloid newspaper. Founded in 1903, it is owned by parent company Reach plc. From 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the title on its masthead was simply The Mirror. It had an average daily print circulation of 716,923 in December 2016, dropping to 587,803 the following year. Its Sunday sister paper is the Sunday Mirror. Unlike other major British tabloids such as The Sun and the Daily Mail, the Mirror has no separate Scottish edition; this function is performed by the Daily Record and the Sunday Mail, which incorporate certain stories from the Mirror that are of Scottish significance.

<i>Sunday Herald</i> Scottish Sunday newspaper based in Glasgow

The Sunday Herald was a Scottish Sunday newspaper, published between 7 February 1999 and 2 September 2018. Originally a broadsheet, it was published in compact format from 20 November 2005. The paper was known for having combined a centre-left stance with support for Scottish devolution, and later Scottish independence. The last edition of the newspaper was published on 2 September 2018 and it was replaced with Sunday editions of The Herald and The National.

<i>Belfast Telegraph</i> Northern Irish newspaper

The Belfast Telegraph is a daily newspaper published in Belfast, Northern Ireland, by Independent News & Media, which also publishes the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent and various other newspapers and magazines in Ireland. Its editor is Eoin Brannigan. Reflecting its unionist tradition, the paper has historically been "favoured by the Protestant population", while also being read within Catholic nationalist communities in Northern Ireland. It has been owned by Independent News and Media, a Dublin-based media company, since 2000, and is the company's only print title outside of the Republic of Ireland.

<i>Edinburgh Evening News</i> Daily newspaper located in Edinburgh, Scotland

The Edinburgh Evening News is a daily newspaper and website based in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was founded by John Wilson (1844–1909) and first published in 1873. It is printed daily, except on Sundays. It is owned by National World, which also owns The Scotsman.

Freddie Scappaticci was an Irish IRA member named in the Kenova report as a British Intelligence mole with the codename Stakeknife.

<i>The Glasgow Guardian</i>

The Glasgow Guardian is the student newspaper of the University of Glasgow.

<i>Sunday Mail</i> (Scotland) Scottish newspaper

The Sunday Mail is a Scottish tabloid newspaper published every Sunday. It is the sister paper of the Daily Record and is owned by Reach plc.

The Sunday World is an Irish newspaper published by Independent News & Media. It is the second largest selling "popular" newspaper in the Republic of Ireland, and is also sold in Northern Ireland where a modified edition with more stories relevant to that region is produced. It was first published on 25 March 1973. Until 25 December 1988 all editions were printed in Dublin but since 1 January 1989 a Northern Ireland edition has been published and an English edition has been printed in London since March 1992.

Graham Spiers is a Scottish sports journalist who writes for the Scottish edition of The Times newspaper. He has won Scotland's Sports Journalist of the Year award four times.

<i>The Northern Echo</i> Newspaper in England

The Northern Echo is a regional daily morning newspaper based in the town of Darlington in North East England, serving mainly southern County Durham and northern Yorkshire. The paper covers national as well as regional news. In 2007, its then-editor claimed that it was one of the most famous provincial newspapers in the United Kingdom. Its first edition was published on 1 January 1870.

Hubert Kinsman Cudlipp, Baron Cudlipp, OBE, was a Welsh journalist and newspaper editor noted for his work on the Daily Mirror in the 1950s and 1960s. He served as chairman of the Mirror Group group of newspapers from 1963 to 1967, and the chairman of the International Publishing Corporation from 1968 to 1973.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roy Greenslade</span> British academic and journalist (born 1946)

Roy Greenslade is a British author and freelance journalist, and a former professor of journalism. He worked in the UK newspaper industry from the 1960s onwards. As a media commentator, he wrote a daily blog from 2006 to 2018 for The Guardian and a column for London's Evening Standard from 2006 to 2016. Under a pseudonym, Greenslade also wrote for the Sinn Féin newspaper An Phoblacht during the late 1980s whilst also working on Fleet Street. In 2021, it was reported in The Times newspaper, citing an article by Greenslade in the British Journalism Review, that he supported the bombing campaign of the Provisional IRA. Following this revelation, Greenslade resigned as Honorary Visiting Professor at City, University of London.

<i>The Sun</i> (United Kingdom) British tabloid newspaper

The Sun is a British tabloid newspaper, published by the News Group Newspapers division of News UK, itself a wholly owned subsidiary of Lachlan Murdoch's News Corp. It was founded as a broadsheet in 1964 as a successor to the Daily Herald, and became a tabloid in 1969 after it was purchased by its current owner. The Sun had the largest daily newspaper circulation in the United Kingdom, but was overtaken by freesheet rival Metro in March 2018.

<i>The National</i> (Scotland) Daily Scottish newspaper

The National is a Scottish daily newspaper owned by Newsquest. It began publication on 24 November 2014, and was the first daily newspaper in Scotland to support Scottish independence. Launched as a response to calls from Newsquest's readership for a pro-independence paper in the wake of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, it is a sister paper of The Herald, and is edited by Laura Webster. Initially published on weekdays, a Saturday edition was added in May 2015. The National is printed in tabloid format, and is also available via online subscription.

Ian Bell was a Scottish journalist and author who won the Orwell Prize for political journalism in 1997. Over a thirty-year career he wrote for and edited: The Scotsman, The Herald, The Sunday Herald, the Daily Record and The Times Literary Supplement. He was named Scotland's columnist of the year four times between 2000 and 2012. He completed three books- two volumes on Bob Dylan and a biography of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Richard Walker is a Scottish journalist who is editor of the Sunday National. He was editor of the Sunday Herald from 1999–2015 and launched The National in 2014. He was Newsquest's editor of the year in 2014.

Angela Haggerty is a former journalist, who briefly held a new editor position at the Sunday Herald and online for the activist website CommonSpace. She has been a contributor on Scottish TV and radio, particularly discussing Scottish independence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National World</span> British news publishing company

National World plc is a British multimedia company based in Leeds, England. The company was founded and listed on the London Stock Exchange in September 2019 as a media takeover vehicle. In January 2021, it acquired JPIMedia for £10.2 million.

Alison Phillips is a British journalist who served as the editor of the Daily Mirror between 2018 and 2024.

<i>All the Little Guns Went Bang Bang</i> Book by Neil Mackay

All the Little Guns Went Bang Bang is Neil Mackay's debut 2013 novel about two children who grow up in Northern Ireland.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Editor Neil Mackay quits Sunday Herald due to 'ill-health' - Journalism News from HoldtheFrontPage". HoldtheFrontPage. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  2. 1 2 "Neil Mackay gets signed up". Press Gazette. 13 May 2004. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Mackay, Neil (19 July 2020). "Opinion: Neil Mackay: How I learned to cope with a diagnosis of PTSD". HeraldScotland. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  4. 1 2 Trainer, Paul (12 February 2017). "Sunday Herald at 18: Interview with editor Neil Mackay". Glasgowist. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  5. ↑ Greenslade, Roy (1 February 2016). "Why the Herald's editor fired a columnist in row with Rangers". the Guardian. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  6. ↑ Greenslade, Roy (29 January 2016). "Two columnists depart from Glasgow's Herald in row with Rangers". the Guardian. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  7. ↑ Byrne, Ciar (15 May 2003). "We were right to name Stakeknife, say reporters". the Guardian. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  8. ↑ "Papers remain confident about Stakeknife identity". Press Gazette. 15 May 2003. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  9. ↑ "Nazi Hate Rock A Macintyre Investigation (2006)". BFI. Archived from the original on 26 January 2022. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  10. ↑ Mackay, Neil (22 January 2006). "White off the scale". The Guardian.
  11. ↑ Matchett, Donor (18 February 2021). "Nicola Sturgeon urged to act on social media amplification of Wings Over Scotland blog". www.scotsman.com. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  12. ↑ McCarthy, John (16 January 2015). "Charlie Hebdo NUJ debate: Sunday Herald's Neil Mackay clashes with 5Pillars' Roshan Salih on whether the media should critisise [sic] religion". The Drum. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  13. ↑ Coates, Ken (2007). Surging for Oil (PDF). pp. 79–81. ISBN   978-0851247434.
  14. ↑ Deane, Raymond (15 December 2006). "Book Review: Incandescent Nation". The Electronic Intifada . Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  15. ↑ Smart, James (9 August 2013). "All the Little Guns Went Bang, Bang, Bang by Neil Mackay – review". the Guardian. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  16. ↑ McClements, Freya (17 October 2013). "All the Little Guns Went Bang Bang Bang, by Neil Mackay". The Irish Times. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  17. ↑ Massie, Allan (30 April 2016). "Book review: The Wolf Trial by Neil Mackay". www.scotsman.com. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  18. ↑ Williams, Martin (25 April 2019). "Scottish Press Awards: Herald and Times titles celebrate awards". HeraldScotland. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  19. ↑ Sharman, David. "Society of Editors Regional Press Awards winners announced - Journalism News from HoldtheFrontPage". HoldtheFrontPage. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
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.