Page 49 - Powerlist 2019 - Digital Edition

NEW Afua Hirsch
2019
Journalist, Author, Broadcaster

Journalist, broadcaster and best-selling author Afua Media, Publishing & Entertainment
Hirsch began her career aged 15 as a writer on The Voice
newspaper. There, she began chronicling the challenges
and struggles facing Britain’s black teenagers.
She went on to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics
at Oxford, where she was made a scholar, and then moved
to Senegal where she worked for the non-profit foundation
established by billionaire philanthropist George Soros. After
converting to law, and completing her pupillage at human
rights chambers Doughty Street, she joined The Guardian
newspaper in 2008 as legal affairs correspondent.
She became the first West Africa correspondent for The
Guardian and is now the author of a fortnightly column
in the newspaper where she covers topics ranging from
international trade, geopolitical shifts and international law
to social justice, identity and narratives around race.
Following three years as a correspondent for Sky News,
Afua is also a regular presenter on current affairs show
The Pledge, a panellist on CNN Talk, and presents Yanga’s
Journalists Hangout UK – a discussion show dissecting
global news for an African diaspora audience. She has
already made four documentaries this year, including
The Battle for Britain’s Heroes, an hour long Channel 4
programme, a Radio 4 documentary on the Biafra War, a
BBC World Service programme on luxury African fashion,
and a programme about male-only spaces. She is currently NEW David Olusoga
presenting a landmark series for Radio 4 about international 2019 Historian; Joint Creative Director of
justice since the Second World War. Uplands Television Ltd
Afua’s first book Brit(ish) explores heritage, belonging
and Britishness, and was published in February by Jonathan
Cape. It is the winner of the Royal Society of Literature David Olusoga has been described as the “new face of BBC
Jerwood award for non-fiction. Written as narrative history”, charging through the “pale, male, stale” ranks to
non-fiction, Brit(ish) explores Afua’s life-long interest in front a series of high-profile, prime-time documentaries,
identity and Britain’s struggles to face up to its past and including the acclaimed Black and British: A Forgotten
accommodate its multicultural future. History.
Brought up in Newcastle and the son of a Nigerian father
and white British mother, violent racist abuse on the estate
where he lived drove his family out of their home. David says
the experience led him to an interest in history “because I
wanted to make sense of the forces that have affected my life”.
He joined the BBC following graduation from university
in Liverpool and Leicester, where he studied history and
journalism, working first behind the camera as a producer
before presenting 2014’s The World’s War: Forgotten Soldiers
of Empire, about the Indian, African and Asian troops who
fought in WWI, and the Bafta award-winning Britain’s
Forgotten Slave Owners in 2105.
His 2016 book Black and British: A Forgotten History
was awarded both the Longman-History Today Trustees
Award2017 and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2017, and
made into a documetary series, which he fronted.
In 2017 he co-hosted BBC2’s Civilisations with Mary Beard
and Simon Schama and also presented the BBC2 series A
House Through Time. He writes regularly for The Guardian,
The Observer and the BBC History Magazine. He sits on
the board of The Scott Trust, shareholder of the Guardian
Media Group. He is a patron of the Wimpole History Festival
and a member of the Advisory Panel for the Imperial War
Museum’s Second World War Galleries.

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