Cole Moreton

Cole Moreton is a writer and broadcaster exploring who we are and what we believe in. He interviews people for the Mail on Sunday, writes for other titles including The Guardian, makes and presents award-winning documentaries for BBC Radio 4 and has just published his fifth book. Cole has interviewed some of the most famous and infamous people in the world, from Tiger Woods to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Browse through an A-Z of interviews here. He was named Interviewer of the Year at the Press Awards for his work with Event, the arts and culture magazine of the Mail on Sunday in 2016 and shortlisted for a fifth time in 2018. His Radio 4 series The Boy Who Gave His Heart Away won Audio Moment of the Year at the ARIAS, the radio industry Oscars, as well as Best Documentary at the BBC Radio Awards and several golds including Best Writing at the New York Festival. He was recently shortlisted for Best Speech Presenter at the Audio Production Awards and won bronze. Other BBC Radio 4 series as a writer and presenter include The Lost Cockney Voice; Waco: Surviving The Apocalypse and The Walk: For Richer, For Poorer, an immersive journey from Harrods Food Hall to a food bank, talking to the super rich and those who are struggling. This also won gold for Best Social Issues documentary at the International Radio Awards in New York. The Walk: Across The Water is a two-part documentary exploring the links between Calais and Dover, towns on opposite sides of the Channel. All these programmes were produced by Jonathan Mayo for TBI Media. Cole Moreton's Hungry for Home (Viking) was a finalist for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for a first book in any genre in 2000, alongside White Teeth by Zadie Smith. His debut novel The Light Keeper (Marylebone House) is out now, a story of love, hope and longing set in a real lighthouse on the edge of a four-hundred-foot cliff at Beachy Head, near his home. Media appearances include The Big Questions, Newsnight, Today and The Moral Maze. Cole was guest presenter of the Sunday programme for Radio 4, with a one-hour special on art and spirituality.He is the co-creator of the Edge of England podcast exploring life along the South Coast. As a speaker and performer, Cole has appeared at many festivals including Cheltenham, Ways With Words, Brighton and Greenbelt, as well as touring with one-man shows based on his work. He has written for every major national title including The Guardian, The Times and The Financial Times and has covered many of the biggest news stories of our time, from 9/11 to Brexit. As chief feature writer of the Sunday Telegraph he produced reports, features, analysis and comment on major events from the Olympics to the death of Nelson Mandela. Cole pioneered new ways of telling stories online and on social media as well as in print, incorporating short films, video diaries and pieces to camera. A decade on staff at The Independent on Sunday gave him experience in how to handle big stories as an editor as well as a writer. Cole ran the features, comment and foreign sections at various times as executive editor of the title and was part of the team that designed and launched the IOS as Britain's first quality compact Sunday newspaper. He was among colleagues nominated for Team of the Year at the Press Awards twice, for their coverage of 9/11 and the London bombings. Cole has been shortlisted as Interviewer of the Year at the Press Awards five times, in both the popular and broadsheet categories, winning in 2016. His specialist interests include national identity, culture and emerging forms of spirituality. He has also written at length about the arts, particularly music and literature, and plays in a band. The first of Cole's four non-fiction books was Hungry For Home: A Journey To America From The Edge Of Ireland and published by Viking. This combination of journalism, travelogue and dramatised true events told the story of the evacuation of the Great Blasket Island in County Kerry and followed the journey taken by the islanders to new lives in the United States. The story was later completed with The Last Islandman, a film and story describing the day he returned to the Great Blasket with a 92-year-old Dr Mike Carney, the last of his kind. My Father Was A Hero (Viking) told the story of the men and women who returned home to London after WW2 but could not handle peace time. His third book Is God Still An Englishman? How Britain Lost Its Faith (But Found New Soul) was published by Little, Brown. It explores the dramatic changes in British culture and spirituality over the last 30 years and celebrates the possibilities for the future. His fourth book was a retelling of the true story of The Boy Who Gave His Heart Away for HarperCollins. His debut novel The Light Keeper was published by Marylebone House in August 2019. Cole has been a visiting lecturer at Westminster University and a tutor for the Arvon Foundation. Born in East London, he left school at 16 to join the Waltham Forest Guardian as a trainee journalist. Cole went on to work as a writer in refugee camps around the world, including Asia and Africa, before returning to this country to take a First Class degree in Contemporary Writing at Middlesex University. He is based in London and East Sussex, where he spends as much time as possible staring out to sea. Cole Moreton is a father of four, three of whom arrived at once.