Martin Sixsmith
| Martin Sixsmith | |
|---|---|
| Born |
24 September 1954 (age 62) Warrington, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | Manchester Grammar School |
| Alma mater | Oxford University |
| Occupation | Writer |
Martin Sixsmith (born 24 September 1954) is a British author and radio/television presenter, primarily working for the BBC. He has also worked as an adviser to the Labour government and to the BBC television comedy series The Thick of It. Sixsmith's book, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, was the basis for the 2013 film Philomena, in which Sixsmith is played by Steve Coogan.
Sixsmith was born in Warrington, which at the time was in Lancashire but is now in Cheshire. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School where he studied Russian to A-level, then at New College, Oxford, Harvard, the Sorbonne University in Paris, and in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), in Russia. He was a Slavics Tutor at Harvard and wrote his postgraduate thesis about Russian poetry. Between 2002 and 2007 he studied psychology and applied psychology as a mature student at Birkbeck, University of London, and at London Metropolitan University.
Sixsmith joined the BBC in 1980 as a foreign correspondent, most notably reporting from Moscow during the presidencies of Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and the collapse of the Soviet Union. He also reported from Poland during the Solidarity uprising and was the BBC's Washington correspondent during the election and first presidency of Bill Clinton. He was based in Russia for five years, the US for four, Brussels for four and Poland for three.
Sixsmith left the BBC in 1997 to work for the newly elected government of Tony Blair. He became Director of Communications (a civil service post), working first with Harriet Harman and Frank Field, then with Alistair Darling. His next position was as a Director of GEC plc, where he oversaw the rebranding of the company as Marconi plc.
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