Brian Cathcart

Education

Born in Ireland, Cathcart attended school in Dublin and Belfast before taking a degree in history at Trinity College Dublin.

Career

His books include, The Case of Stephen Lawrence (1999), The Fly in the Cathedral (2004) and The News From Waterloo (2015). After graduating in 1978, he joined Reuters news agency, first as a trainee and then as a correspondent. He was on the founding staff of The Independent in 1986, and of The Independent on Sunday in 1990, rising to become deputy editor of the latter paper.

From 1997 Cathcart was a freelance journalist and author, writing about the aftermath of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, the scandal of trainee deaths at the British army’s Deepcut Barracks and the false conviction of Barry George for the murder of Jill Dando.

In 2005-2008 he was assistant editor and then media columnist at the New Statesman. From 2002 he helped launch journalism teaching at Kingston University, finally becoming professor there in 2006.

From 2008-2010 Cathcart was specialist adviser to the House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport at a time when it was investigating press standards and the phone-hacking scandal. The Committee report was highly critical of News International (now News United Kingdom) and of the Press Complaints Commission (since abolished).

From 2010 Cathcart blogged on the unfolding hacking affair, mostly for Index on Censorship, and in 2011, with Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust, he launched Hacked Office to press for a public inquiry into hacking and press standards.

Cathcart served as Hacked Office’s first executive director from 2012 to 2014, writing extensively on press self-regulation and acting as the campaign’s principal spokesman. He appeared before The Leveson Inquiry twice, and his stance on press standards has drawn criticism and personal attacks from some in the industry. Cathcart has written widely on history, both as a journalist and an author

At The Independent on Sunday he wrote a weekly column on the subject called "Rear Window", and began publishing on the history of science.

Test of Greatness (1994) was an account of the making of the British Atomic Bomb. examined the centuries-long struggle to understand the science of rain. The Fly in the Cathedral (2004) was about the first successful artificial disintegration of the atomic nucleus (the splitting of the atom) at Cambridge in the 1930s.

Cathcart has recently turned his attention to the early history of journalism and communication, which is the subject of The News From Waterloo, to be published in May 2015. Orwell Prize for political writing 2000.

Achievements

• He is professor of journalism at Kingston University London and in 2011 was a founder of Hacked Office, which campaigns for a free and accountable press Crime Writers" Association Non-Fiction Gold Dagger 1999.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Case of Stephen Lawrence

    (Eighteen-year-old Stephen Lawrence, the son of Jamaican i...)

  • Fly in the Cathedral: How a Small Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the Race to Split the Atom

    (The splitting of the atom, performed in a shabby Cambridg...)

  • Jill Dando: Her Life and Death

    (She was attractive, successful and, at the age of 37, abo...)

  • The Case of Stephen Lawrence by Brian Cathcart (1999-05-12)
  • Fly in the Cathedral: How a Small Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the Race to Split the Atom by Brian Cathcart (2005-02-24)
  • The fly in the cathedral: How a small group of Cambridge scientists won the race to split the atom