Background

Andrew Marr was born on the 31st of July, 1959, in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom, into the family of traditionally-minded parents - Donald Marr, an investment trust manager, and Valerie Marr.

Education

Andrew Marr studied at Craigflower Preparatory School in Scotland, the autonomous High School of Dundee and Loretto Schoo in Musselburgh, East Lothian. After that, Andrew enrolled in Trinity Hall in Cambridge, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English with first-class honors.

In July 2009, Andrew was awarded an honorary doctorate by Staffordshire University.

Career

Andrew Marr embarked on his media career in 1982 as a general and business reporter for The Scotsman. Two years later, he moved to London and received the post of a parliamentary correspondent in the same newspaper. In 1986, he was promoted to the post of a political editor, remaining with the paper until 1988. He then worked four years at The Economist as a political editor.

Marr was part of the team, which launched The Independent in 1986, later becoming editor there. He climbed the corporate ladder from political correspondent to editor-in-chief. His efforts to revamp the paper failed to stem a decline in sales and he was effectively sacked in 1998 after refusing to push through a round of redundancies. He also held the post of a columnist for the Daily Express and The Observer.

From May 2000, Andrew Marr was a political editor, the post, which he occupied for five years, for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), hosting The Talk Show for BBC Four. He pulled off a number of scoops, but his demonstrative style received mixed reviews and he was mocked on the comedy show Dead Ringers, which portrayed him with huge plastic arms. In 2005, he began to present his own television show, The Andrew Marr Show, which is still on TV today.

Andrew was also given the opportunity to spread his wings as a television presenter and he followed up his History of Britain series in 2008 with Britain from Above, showing how the country's landscape had been affected by the Industrial Revolution and subsequent changes. Marr has also presented the BBC Radio 4's programme, Start the Week, where he is a regular host. In 2012, Andrew Marr's three-part TV series about Queen Elizabeth II came out on BBC One.

Outside his journalistic career, Marr has penned a number of books. His first book, The Battle for Scotland, was published in 1992. He also wrote such books, as Ruling Britannia: The Failure And Future of British Democracy (1995), The Day Britain Died (2000), The Making of Modern Britain: From Queen Victoria to VE Day (2009), The Diamond Queen: Elizabeth II and Her People (2011), A History of the World (2012). His most recent books, A Short Book About Painting and Tales From the Blast Factory: A Brain Injured Special Forces Green Beret's Journey Back From the Brink, came out in 2017.

Achievements

• 

  Andrew Marr is one of the most familiar reporters, journalists, presenters and interviewers on television in Britain. As an editor of The Independent, he made dramatic changes, helping to increase circulation and sales of this British newspaper. Nearly two million viewers watch The Andrew Marr Show every week, its success has been recognized with awards from the media professionals of the Broadcasting Press Guild (Best Presenter) and the Plain English Campaign, which chose The Andrew Marr Show as the Best National TV Programme.
  
  Andrew received many major awards for writing and broadcasting. In 1994, he was named Columnist of the Year and received the British Press Awards and the BBC's What the Papers Say Award. One year later, he was named Commentator of the Year. In 2002 and 2003, he got Broadcasting Press Guild Award for Best Performer in a Non-Acting Role for BBC News at Ten O'Clock. In 2004, Andrew received the Richard Dimbleby Award. The year of 2008 brought him the RTS Television Award and BAFTA TV Award for Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain. In May 2017, he won the RTS Scotland Award for Current Affairs.
  
  Marr's first book, The Battle for Scotland, was praised by Gerry Hassan in New Statesman & Society as "strong on historical detail". It was also described as the work, that makes an excellent primer on Scots politics. His Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain on BBC Two won a string of awards, including the Royal Television Society Award for the best historical program.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Diamond Queen: Elizabeth II and Her People

    (With the flair for narrative and the meticulous research,...)

    2011
  • The Making of Modern Britain: From Queen Victoria to VE Day

    (In The Making of Modern Britain, Andrew Marr paints a fas...)

    2009
  • A History of Modern Britain

    (It tells the story of how the great political visions of ...)

    2007
  • Head of State

    (It's September 2017 and the United Kingdom is on the verg...)

    2014
  • My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism

    (How do you decide what is a "story" and what isn't? What ...)

    2004
  • Tales From the Blast Factory: A Brain Injured Special Forces Green Beret's Journey Back From the Brink

    (Andrew Marr, a former Green Beret with multiple tours of ...)

    2017
  • A History of 20th Century Britain

    (A History of 20th Century Britain collects together for t...)

    2011
  • Children of the Master

    (The second novel from Britain's foremost political commen...)

    2015
  • The Real Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II

    (A surprising and very personal biography of a woman, who ...)

    2012
  • Ruling Britannia: The Failure And Future of British Democracy

    (In this work, political columnist, Andrew Marr, analyzes ...)

    1995
  • A Short Book About Painting

    (In A Short Book About Painting, writer and broadcaster, A...)

    2017
  • A History of the World

    (From the earliest civilizations to the 21st century, a gl...)

    2012
  • The Day Britain Died

    (A journey into the future of Britain, that accompanies th...)

    2000
  • A Short Book About Drawing

    (In this book, Andrew Marr explores the subject of drawing...)

    2013
  • The Battle for Scotland

    (Andrew Marr's first book tells the distinctive story of S...)

    1992
  • We British: The Poetry of a People

    (This is the story of Britain told from inside. Hundreds o...)

    2015

Religion

Andrew Marr once described himself as an irreligious Calvinist.

Politics

As for Marr's political affiliations, he was formerly a Maoist and a member of the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory. It's also worth noting, that, in The Daily Telegraph, in 2007, he said, that he was a Libertarian, when discussing his conflicting views on smoking bans.

It's also important to say, that Marr has written about the need to remain impartial and "studiously neutral", whilst delivering news reports, and "convey fact and nothing more".

Views

Quotations: "Clearly the human story is one of acceleration. There has been a Moore curve in terms of the number of people alive on the planet, our technological ability and our ability to understand ourselves. We have had this extraordinary, explosive growth in our ingenuity."

"My kids wouldn't dream of buying a newspaper and we are a newspaper household."

"In the end, does it really matter if newspapers physically disappear? Probably not, the world is always changing. But does it matter if organizations independent enough and rich enough to employ journalists to do their job disappear? Yes, that matters hugely, it affects the whole of life and society."

"The business of funding digging journalists is important to encourage. It cannot be replaced by bloggers, who don't have access to politicians, who don't have easy access to official documents, who aren't able to buttonhole people in power."

"I'm a great believer in the direct quote in quotation marks and the hard fact."

"Verbally, I'm quite fast on my feet. I could embarrass or anger most people if I wanted to."

"Rude interviewers are ten a penny, and politicians have long since learned how to cope."

"Am I religious? No. Do I believe in anything? No. I just don't have that bump."

"Unlike the general public, I rather like most politicians."

"Interviews, and hence interviewers, are there to help shed light and to let viewers judge for themselves. We are not judges, juries, commentators or torturers nor friends, either."

"A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower nosed young men, sitting in their mother's basements and ranting. They are very angry people."

"It is fantastic at times, but it is not going to replace journalism. Most of the blogging is too angry and too abusive. Terrible things are said online because they are anonymous. People say things online, that they wouldn't dream of saying in person."

"Business never rests."

"In history, the arrival of a small man in a big hat is rarely good news."

Membership

Marr was considered for an honorary membership of The Coterie for 2007.

Personality

Physical Characteristics: In January 2013, Andrew Marr had a stroke and was hospitalized for two months. Initially, his family were told he wouldn't survive and if he did, he would be unable to speak and confined to a wheelchair. However, he defied the odds and was back, presenting his show in September of that year. In 2018, he had to undergo an operation to remove a malignant tumor on his kidney.

Quotes from others about the person

• "Independent has become a crusade for Marr. He has put his distinctive mark on this newspaper he created a new look. The usual run of the home and foreign news has been replaced by feature-length news analysis." - Anna Griffiths
  
  "He's willing to be eccentric and take risks. He's thoughtful, provoking and original." - Anna Griffiths
  
  "One relies on Marr to express strongly, seriously and with distancing humor what so many of us feel about the misgovernment of our country and its antique constitution." - Bernard Crick, a British political theorist and democratic socialist
  
  "Marr effortlessly combines historical analysis, advocacy and dashes of humor to create a spirited examination of Britain's future." - a contributor in Age magazine

Interests

• reading, painting, cooking

Connections

Andrew Marr is married to Jackie Ashley. They have three children - one son, Harry, and two daughters, Isabel and Emily.

Father:

Donald Marr

Mother:

Valerie Marr

Daughter:

Emily Marr

Daughter:

Isabel Marr

Wife:

Jackie Ashley

Jacqueline Ashley is a British journalist. In 1981, she joined Newsnight as a Producer and Newsreader. Jackie's TV career carried on through to 1999 and included a stint at Channel 4 and then ITN as a Political Correspondent. Later, she decided to enter print media and became a Political Editor at the New Statesman and then a Columnist and a Political Interviewer at The Guardian in 2002.

Jackie regularly writes about issues, surrounding the aging society of Britain. In 2009, she chaired a conference, that marked the joining of charities Age Concern and Help The Aged.

Between 2015 and 2018, Ashley was President of Lucy Cavendish College in Cambridge.

Jackie Ashley's journalism career has spanned television, radio and newspapers, and she now writes a weekly column and blog for one of the UK's biggest national dailies.

Son:

Harry Marr