Zoe Williams | |
|---|---|
| Born | Zoe Abigail Williams 7 August 1973 [1] Hounslow, London, England |
| Education | Lincoln College, Oxford (BA) |
| Occupations | Journalist, columnist, author |
| Employer | The Guardian |
| Children | 2 |
Zoe Abigail Williams [2] (born 7 August 1973) [3] is a British columnist, journalist, and author.
Zoe Abigail Williams was born on 7 August 1973 in Hounslow, London. Williams was educated at the independent Godolphin and Latymer School for girls in London and read modern history at Lincoln College, Oxford. [4] Her father, Mark Williams, was a forensic psychologist; [5] he worked at Wandsworth Prison in London. [6] Her mother was a set designer for the BBC. [7] Her parents separated in 1976 and divorced 20 years later. [8] Williams has an older sister [9] and half- and step-siblings from her father's marital and extramarital [9] relationships. Williams said her father was a petty criminal because he committed insurance fraud. [5] [10]
Williams is a lifestyle, wellness and political journalist for The Guardian , with her Fitness in your 40s, family and political columns. Her work has also appeared in other publications, including the New Statesman , The Spectator , Now, [11] the London Cycling Campaign's magazine London Cyclist, and The Times Literary Supplement . [12] She is also a columnist for the London Evening Standard , for which she was a diarist writing about being a single woman in London. She reviewed restaurants for The Sunday Telegraph magazine. [13]
In May 2011, Williams wrote about fare dodging when in her 30s while travelling on London buses. She wrote: "I actually had a lot of affection for bendy buses, mainly because evading your fare was so easy that to pay was almost missing the point. We used to call it freebussing." [14] [15]
In 2014, Williams defended the social policy legacy of former Labour prime minister Tony Blair and denounced those calling him a war criminal. [16] Following the death of Fidel Castro, Williams condemned his rule in Cuba, while imploring her readers to ignore his policies. [17] In August 2015, Williams endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election. She wrote in The Guardian: "The point is, Corbyn doesn't have to be right about everything; he doesn't have to be certain, and fully costed about everything; he doesn't even have to be responsive and listening to everything. This political moment is about breaking open the doors and letting the 21st century in." [18]
Williams writes about her personal life from a feminist perspective, such as her marriages, [19] motherhood, and her abortion. [20] [21]
She wrote Bring It On, Baby: How to have a dudelike pregnancy, a 2010 book of advice for mothers-to-be, which was republished in 2012 as What Not to Expect When You're Expecting. [13]
Williams was longlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2012, [22] [23] and was named Columnist of the Year 2010 at the WorkWorld Media Awards. [24]
Williams has appeared as a guest on television. Clive James praised her appearance in documentary Teenage Kicks: the Search for Sophistication: "The brilliant journalist Zoe Williams did a short piece to camera that was almost an aria." [25] She has presented a radio documentary, Inside the Academy School Revolution, which Miranda Sawyer found one-sided and "tame", [26] and hosted BBC Radio 4's What The Papers Say . She has been a panellist on the BBC's Any Questions [27] and Question Time . [28]
 |
In February 2020, Williams was criticised online and in Nation.Cymru for her comments about the Welsh language. Her article on exercise criticised a particular Canadian fitness regime as "hard and existentially pointless", continuing: "all that energy spent, no distance covered: it's like eating cottage cheese or learning Welsh." [29] [30] Williams had previously praised the language on Twitter for giving Welsh speakers "a more international outlook". [30] [31]
Williams lives in South London with her second husband, Will Higham, and his daughter from another marriage, as well as her son, Thurston, [32] and daughter, Harper, [33] who were fathered by her first husband before she married him. [34] Williams married the father, a geologist, [35] of her son and daughter [36] in 2013, after ten years together, and wrote about the wedding from a feminist perspective in her column for The Guardian. [37] [38] In 2018, after a divorce, Williams married for the second time. [34]
Williams became a trustee of the Butler Trust [39] —which was established to recognise the achievements of prison service staff—in November 2013. [2]
She is a patron of Humanists UK. [40]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
