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Paul Foot: A Journalist’s Life [R]

As her biography of Paul Foot is launched, Margaret Renn discusses his legacy as an investigative journalist. His notable columns appeared in Private Eye, Socialist Worker, the Guardian, and the London Review of Books. But his page in the Daily Mirror, which ran for 14 years, was perhaps the most significant. No story was too small – a sick child in a damp flat – or too important for his critical eye: the sinking of the Belgrano, the bombing at Lockerbie, the Private Finance Initiative. Some of his stories ran for years – 30 years in the case of Jeffrey Archer. He also published books, ten in total, including three about miscarriages of justice: Who Killed Hanratty (1971), Murder at the Farm: Who Killed Carl Bridgewater? (1986), and Who Framed Colin Wallace? (1989). He never called himself an investigative journalist, and wrote news like it was fiction, everything was story.

Chaired by Christopher Hird.

Margaret Renn’s book Paul Foot: a Life in Politics is on sale now through the publishers Verso and will be on sale at the #CIJSummer bookshop, ran by The Word Bookshop, an independent book shop in New Cross.

3 July 2024 – Paul Foot: a Journalist’s Life

16:30–17:30

Margaret Renn

Margaret Renn is a writer and journalist. She worked alongside the investigative journalist Paul Foot on Socialist Worker and then at the Daily Mirror from the early ‘80s until 1993. She has since worked at the BBC and produced radio documentaries for Radio 4 and the World Service, including programs on Lockerbie and on corruption.

Christopher Hird

Christopher Hird founded Dartmouth Films in 2008, to pioneer new ways of funding, producing and distributing documentaries. A former investment analyst in the City, he worked as a journalist on the Economist, Daily Mail, New Statesman and Sunday Times (as the editor of Insight), before becoming a television reporter and producer.
  • 3 July 2024 16.30–17.30
Location: PSH LG02
Talk
Journalism
Paul Foot Award
This event will be recorded