Andrew Williams

Background

Andrew Williams was born on 8 May 1962 in Sheffield.

Education

He was educated at Carre"s Grammar School, Sleaford and Trinity College, Oxford and was a member of its University Challenge team in 1983.

Career

He is a former Senior Producer and Director at the British Broadcasting Corporation, the author of four historical novels and two histories of the Second World War. He trained with Westminster Press and worked as a reporter with The Kentish Times newspaper group in south London. Williams joined the British Broadcasting Corporation as a News Trainee in 1986 and worked as a Producer on Newsnight.

In 1992, he directed and produced the documentary A Journey Home with the model, Iman, on the famine and civil war in her native Somalia.

Then in 1993 he joined Panorama as an Assistant Editor, reporting on the domestic and international stories of the day. In 1997, Williams directed and produced a ground breaking television series with Reporter, Peter Taylor, on the history of the Provisional Ireland Republican Army and Sinn Féin, Provos.

He then joined British Broadcasting Corporation documentaries to write and direct programmes for Timewatch and Reputations. His documentary, Journey to the Killing Fields, included an interview with Political Pot"s deputy, Nuon Chea before his arrest on war crimes charges.

The programme was nominated for a Grierson Award.

In 2004, he produced and wrote the series, Doctorate-Day to Berlin and the accompanying book And in 2008 he directed a six part drama documentary series about Stalin, World World War II: Behind Closed Doors for executive producer and writer, Laurence Rees. His latest novel, The Suicide Club is a spy thriller set at British Army headquarters in France during World War 1 and in German occupied Belgium.

The Daily Mail has described Williams as being "in the front rank of the new English thriller writers".

Achievements

• His programme with Reporter, Jane Corbin, on the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica, War Crime: Five Days in Hell, was used as evidence at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, and nominated for an Emmy Award. His television history of the struggle against the German U-boat during World World War II, The Battle of the Atlantic won the Mountbatten Maritime Prize and A New York Film and Television Festival Award, and was nominated for a Royal Television Society Award, and he wrote a best selling companion book to the series. Williams’ first historical novel, The Interrogator was published by John Murray in 2009, and was shortlisted for both the Crime Writers Association (CWA) Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, and the Ellis Peters Historical Award. His second, To Kill A Tsar was shortlisted for the Ellis Peters Historical Award and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, and was The Daily Mail"s thriller of 2010.