Marcel Raymond Theroux is a British novelist and broadcaster.
Background
He is the middle son of the American travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux and his then-wife Anne Castle. Marcel Theroux was born in 1968 in Kampala, Uganda, where his American-born father Paul Theroux was teaching at Makerere University. His mother is Anne Castle, an English woman.
The family spent the next two years in Singapore, where his father taught at the National University of Singapore.
Education
Yale University; Clare College. Westminster School.
Career
His third novel, A Blow to the Heart, was published by Faber in 2006. His fourth, Far North, was published in June 2009. His fifth, Strange Bodies, was published in May 2013.
He has also worked in television news in New York and in Boston.
After their return to England, Theroux was brought up in Wandsworth, London. He went on to study English Literature at Clare College, Cambridge.
His paternal French surname originates from the region around Sarthe and Yonne in France. lieutenant is quite common in francophone countries and is originally spelled Théroux.
His father, born and raised in the United States, is of half French Canadian and half Italian descent.
From 2000 to 2002, Theroux presented a series of documentaries for Unreported World. In 2004 he presented The End of the World as We Know lieutenant, part of the War on Terra television series about climate change on Channel 4. He was chosen as presenter because he originally knew nothing about the subject.
He initially believed that all environmentalists were opposed to technological progress.
But during his research, he became convinced that the world faced a global problem on a scale so serious that an expansion of nuclear energy is probably the best solution (choosing the lesser evil). He reached this conclusion partly in response to his interviews with several experts, such as Gerhard Bertz of the insurance agency Munich Re, who said that during the past 20 years, payments for natural disasters have increased by 500 percent.
He also interviewed Royal Dutch Shell chairman Lord Ron Oxburgh. A Puerto Rico assistant interrupted them.
Oxburgh"s negative views on the consequences of current oil consumption were likely considered detrimental to the corporation"s image.
In March 2006 Theroux presented Death of a Nation on More4, as part of the The State of Russia series. In the programme he explored the country"s post-Soviet problems, including population decline, the growing Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome epidemic, and the persecution of the Meskhetian Turks. During interviews in the programme, he spoke simple Russian.
On 28 September 2008 he presented Oligart: The Great Russian Art Boom on Channel 4, exploring the role of Russia"s rich in keeping Russia"s art history alive by buying and exhibiting domestic art
In March 2009, Faber and Faber published Theroux"s Far North, a future epic set in the Siberian taiga. On 16 March 2009, Theroux presented In Search of Wabi-sabi on British Broadcasting Corporation Four, as part of the channel"s "Hidden Japan" season of programming.
Theroux travelled and reported from Japan to explore the aesthetic tastes of Japan and its people. In 2012, Theroux presented a documentary for Unreported World Series 23, on the subject of street children in Ukraine.