Robert Fisk
| Robert Fisk | |
|---|---|
Fisk in 2008
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| Born |
12 July 1946 Maidstone, Kent, England |
| Education |
Lancaster University (B.A., 1968) Trinity College, Dublin (PhD, 1985) |
| Occupation | Middle East correspondent for The Independent |
| Notable credit(s) | Jacob's Award, Amnesty International UK Press Awards, British Press Awards, International Journalist of the Year, Reporter of the Year, David Watt Prize, Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize |
| Spouse(s) | Lara Marlowe (1994–2006) |
| Website | http://www.independent.co.uk/biography/robert-fisk |
Robert Fisk (born 12 July 1946) is an English writer and journalist from Maidstone, Kent. He has been Middle East correspondent intermittently since 1976 for various media; since 1989 he is correspondent for The Independent, primarily based in Beirut. Fisk holds more British and international journalism awards than any other foreign correspondent and has been awarded the Press Awards Foreign Reporter of the Year seven times. He has published a number of books and reported on several wars and armed conflicts.
An Arabic speaker, he is one of a few Western journalists to have interviewed Osama bin Laden, which he did on three occasions between 1993 and 1997.
Fisk was an only child, born in Maidstone, Kent. His father, already in his mid-50s, was Borough Treasurer at Maidstone Corporation and had fought in the First World War.
He was educated at Yardley Court, a preparatory school, then at Sutton Valence School and Lancaster University, where he cut his journalistic teeth on the student magazine John O'Gauntlet. He later gained a PhD in Political Science, from Trinity College, Dublin in 1983. The title of his doctoral thesis was "A condition of limited warfare: Éire's neutrality and the relationship between Dublin, Belfast and London, 1939–1945".
Fisk worked on the Sunday Express diary column before a disagreement with the editor, John Junor, prompted a move to The Times. From 1972–75, the height of The Troubles, Fisk served as Belfast correspondent for The Times, before becoming its correspondent in Portugal covering the aftermath of the Carnation Revolution. He then was appointed Middle East correspondent (1976–1988). When a story of his was spiked (Iran Air Flight 655) after Rupert Murdoch's takeover, he moved to The Independent in April 1989. The New York Times once described Robert Fisk as "probably the most famous foreign correspondent in Britain". He reported the Northern Ireland troubles in the 1970s, the Portuguese Revolution in 1974, the Lebanese Civil War, the Iranian revolution in 1979, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the Iran–Iraq War, the Gulf War, the Bosnian War, the Algerian Civil War, the Kosovo War, the 2001 international intervention in Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Arab Spring in 2011 and the ongoing Syrian Civil War.
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