About

Biography

Richard Girling was born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, on 14 November, 1945. Between the ages of five and eleven he was educated at Lower Stondon County Primary School in Bedfordshire, where Miss Harris and Mrs Wilshere drilled him in spelling and encouraged him to believe he could one day be a writer. He subsequently kicked his heels at a stiflingly old-fangled grammar school until he was rescued from the sixth form by Roy Lomas, editor of The Hertfordshire Express, who gave him a job as a reporter. Brief stints followed at a teenage music magazine and the Luton Evening Post before he was offered a place at The Sunday Times, then edited by the peerless Harold Evans. He remained on the paper’s staff for twenty years, first as a sub-editor on the Magazine, then editor of various specialist sections including the travel and environment pages, and finally managing editor of the Magazine. His work on the environment earned him a short-term fellowship at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he was greatly influenced by the landscape historian Oliver Rackham and began his first book, Ielfstan’s Place. After leaving the staff in 1992, he continued to write regularly on environmental issues for the The Sunday Times Magazine.

Awards for his work have included Specialist Writer of the Year in the UK Press Awards of 2002, Journalist of the Year in the Press Gazette Environmental Awards of 2008 and 2009, an Evian Health Award and an Older People in the Media Award. He is married to his former Sunday Times colleague Caroline McGhie, with whom he lives in North Norfolk

‘Our heritage, our environment and our obligations to future generations are Richard Girling’s forte. He writes with a powerful, passionate voice and stops at nothing to call to account those responsible for decaying standards.’

Citation, UK Press Awards