Andrew Neil

Biography:

Andrew Neil is a publisher, broadcaster and company chairman working out of London, New York, Dubai and the South of France.  

He was named UK Journalist of the Year 2013 by Britain’s prestigious Political Studies Association and one of the 500 most influential people in the UK by Debrett’s in 2015. 

In March 2015 The Times said “the ultimate test for assessing whether a party leader was fit to be Prime Minister is to put them in front of Andrew Neil for 40 minutes, the most forensic interviewer in broadcasting.”

In April 2016, a poll of Members of Parliament voted him the best overall political journalist in the country.

He is currently:

• Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Press Holdings Media Group, publishers of The Spectator, Spectator Australia and Apollo, the world-renowned art magazine.
• Chairman of ITP, the biggest magazine publisher in the Gulf (based in Dubai).

In addition to his business responsibilities, Andrew presents a weekly forensic politics analysis for ITN productions and was a well-known anchorman on BBC TV and Politics Live on BBC2 every week, and the award-winning This Week on BBC1 on Thursday night. Until recently, Andrew presented the Daily Politics on BBC2, and Sunday Politics on BBC1. He also anchors Politics Europe, which is broadcast on BBC2, BBC News Channel and BBC World. 

He covered US politics and business extensively since the 1970s, from making a 60-minute documentary on the Tea Party, which was distributed worldwide, to anchoring the BBC’s global results coverage of the 2016 presidential election from Times Square.

During his career, Andrew has been a House of Commons political correspondent in London, White House correspondent in Washington DC and Wall Street correspondent in New York – all for The Economist. He was made British Editor of The Economist in 1982.

The following year he left The Economist, to become Editor of The Sunday Times of London, one of the world’s most prestigious and influential newspapers. Over the next 11 years he turned it into the undisputed multi-section market leader, renowned for its investigative journalism and scoops. 

While still editing The Sunday Times he also served as Executive Chairman of Sky Television, which he launched in 1989 as Britain’s first multi-channel satellite TV platform. He created Sky News and brought The Simpsons to British screens. Sky is now a £15bn company.

Until recently he was a member of the International Advisory Board of Al Jazeera, the international news channel based in Doha, Qatar; and Publisher of The Scotsman Group of newspapers in Edinburgh for 10 years. 

He has lectured on politics, economics, international relations, business and the digital revolution to some of the most important companies in the world, from Microsoft and Oracle to HSBC and Citibank.

Born in Scotland, he graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1971 with an MA (Hons) in Political Economy, Political Science and American History. 

In October 1996 Macmillan published his autobiography “Full Disclosure”, on his Sunday Times and Sky TV years, which was serialized in Vanity Fair in America and the Daily Mail in Britain.

Andrew holds several honorary degrees. In 1999 he was elected Lord Rector of the University of St Andrews, one of the oldest and most distinguished universities in the world. On stepping down from that post he was made a Doctor of Laws by the university. 

When not chairing companies, travelling or presenting TV shows he likes to ride his bike.