2002 - The Judges
Profiles

David Dimbleby (chair) is a major presenter of current affairs programmes and documentaries for BBC television.  During his BBC career he has presented Panorama, 24 Hours, People and Power, The Dimbleby Talk-In and This Week Next Week.  He wrote and presented the award-winning TV series, The White Tribe Of Africa and An Ocean Apart.

He has also presented many Budget Specials and a number of BBC Election programmes.  He was anchorman for the 1979, 1983, 1987, 1992 and 1997 General Election night coverage, and the US Presidential Election programmes in 1984, 1988 and 1992.  He became Chairman of BBC 1’s Question Time in 1994.

Richard Fortey is a distinguished palaeozoologist and geologist.  In more than 150 publications he has contributed enormously to scientific understanding of these areas and has made important contributions to the public understanding of science. In recognition of his geological work he was awarded the Lyell Medal of the Geological Society of London in 1996; he was elected FRS a year later.

He has written a number of books, including The Hidden Landscape (1993) which won The Natural World Book of the Year Award; Life: an unauthorized biography (1997), shortlisted for the Rhone-Poulenc Prize in 1998; Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution (2000), shortlisted for The Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in 2001.

He is a regular contributor to The London Review of Books, TLSand the London Evening Standard, and has written for The Guardian and THES.  In 1999 he was a judge for the Rhone-Poulenc Prize.  In 2001 he was awarded the Zoological Society of London’s Frink Medal.

Caroline Gascoigne has been Literary Editor of The Sunday Times since July 1999.  She joined The Sunday Times in 1991 as a reviewer and became Deputy Literary Editor in 1995. 

She graduated in English Literature from Girton College, Cambridge in1981 and began writing for a number of titles including Homes and Gardens and She.  She worked on the Sunday Telegraph and Daily Telegraph magazines before joining The Sunday Times.  She lives in London.

Bonnie Greer is a writer, critic and broadcaster. She moved to London in 1986 having studied with David Mamet at St Nicholas Theatre, Chicago, and Eliza Kazan at The Actors Studio in New York.

Her stage credits include:  Zebra Days (The Oval, 1989); Shoes (Soho Theatre Company, 1994); You (Polygot Theatre Company, Young Vic 1997); and Jitterbug (Arcola Theatre, November 2001).   Radio credits for BBC Radio 4 include Black Betty (1997), Bones (1998), The Dressmaker (1999), Louis – The Lonely Days (2001) and Letters to an Icon (March 2002).

She is a regular critic on R4’s Front Row, R3’s Night Waves and BBC2’s Newsnight Review, and writes a weekly arts column for The Mail on Sunday Night and Day magazine.

She is currently Arts Council of England Playwright in Residence for the London based Pascal Theatre Company and has recently been appointed a board member of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and a Governor of The London International Film School. Her first novel Hanging By Her Teeth was published in 1994, her second, Riding The 903 is due to be published in 2003.

Robert Harris joined the BBC in 1978 from Cambridge and worked on Tonight and Panorama, before moving to Newsnight in 1982.

In 1987, he become Political Editor of The Observer and in 1989 became a weekly columnist for the Sunday Times.  He has made several films for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, including God Bless You, Mr Chamberlain, and is the author of several works of non-fiction, including Gotcha!, Selling Hitler, Good and Faithful Servant,  and A Higher Form of Killing.

His first novel, Fatherland (1992), became an instant bestseller, and was followed by Enigma three years later.  Enigma was made into a film starring Kate Winslet and Dougray Scott. The film rights to his novel Archangel, (1998), have been bought by Mel Gibson.

He lives in Berkshire with his wife, Gill Hornby, and their four children.