Martin Sixsmith
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Martin Sixsmith (born 24 September 1954) is a British author and radio/television presenter, primarily working for the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...
. He has also worked as an adviser to the
Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...
government and to the BBC television comedy series '' The Thick of It''. Sixsmith's book, ''The Lost Child of Philomena Lee'', was the basis for the 2013 film '' Philomena'', in which Sixsmith is played by
Steve Coogan Stephen John Coogan (; born 14 October 1965) is an English actor, comedian, producer and screenwriter. He is most known for creating original characters such as Alan Partridge, a socially inept and politically incorrect media personality, which ...
.


Education

Sixsmith was born in
Warrington Warrington () is a town and unparished area in the borough of the same name in the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England, on the banks of the River Mersey. It is east of Liverpool, and west of Manchester. The population in 2019 was estimat ...
. He was educated at
The Manchester Grammar School The Manchester Grammar School (MGS) in Manchester, England, is the largest independent day school for boys in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1515 as a free grammar school next to Manchester Parish Church, it moved in 1931 to its present site at ...
, then at
New College, Oxford New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1379 by William of Wykeham in conjunction with Winchester College as its feeder school, New College is one of the oldest colleges at th ...
,
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, the Sorbonne University in Paris, and in
Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
– then called Leningrad – in Russia. He studied Russian and French. He was a Slavics Tutor at Harvard, and wrote his postgraduate thesis about Russian poetry. Between 2002 and 2007 he studied psychology and applied psychology as a mature student at Birkbeck College, University of London, and at London Metropolitan University.


Career and writings

Sixsmith joined the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...
in 1980 as a foreign correspondent, reporting from Moscow during the presidencies of
Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet politician who served as the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...
and
Boris Yeltsin Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin ( rus, Борис Николаевич Ельцин, p=bɐˈrʲis nʲɪkɐˈla(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ ˈjelʲtsɨn, a=Ru-Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.ogg; 1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Soviet and Russian politician wh ...
and the collapse of the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
. He also reported from
Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
during the
Solidarity ''Solidarity'' is an awareness of shared interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies creating a psychological sense of unity of groups or classes. It is based on class collaboration.''Merriam Webster'', http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictio ...
uprising and was the BBC's
Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...
correspondent during the election and first presidential term of
Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...
. He was based in Russia for five years, the US for four, Brussels for four and Poland for three. Sixsmith left the BBC in 1997 to work for the newly elected government of Tony Blair. He became Director of Communications for the
Department of Social Security The Department of Social Security (DSS) was a governmental agency in the United Kingdom from 1988 to 2001. The old abbreviation is still often used informally. Advertisements for rented accommodation used to describe prospective tenants who wou ...
(a civil service post), working first with Harriet Harman and Frank Field, then with Alistair Darling. His next position was as a Director of GEC plc, where he oversaw the rebranding of the company as
Marconi Communications Marconi Communications, the former telecommunications arm of Britain's General Electric Company plc (GEC), was founded in August 1998 through the amalgamation of GEC Plessey Telecommunications (GPT) with other GEC subsidiaries: Marconi SpA, GEC ...
. In December 2001, he returned to the Civil Service to join the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions as Director of Communications, where he became embroiled in a scandal over the actions of
Jo Moore This is a list of political scandals in the United Kingdom in chronological order. Scandals implicating political figures or governments of the UK, often reported in the mass media, have long had repercussions for their popularity. Issues in po ...
. Moore was a special adviser to the transport secretary Stephen Byers who had been the subject of much public condemnation for suggesting that a controversial announcement could be "buried" by being made in the wake of the
September 11, 2001 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...
. Sixsmith incurred the displeasure of
Tony Blair Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He previously served as Leader of th ...
when his email advising Byers and Moore not to bury more bad news was leaked to the press. The government tried to force him to resign, but had later to issue an apology and pay him compensation. Sixsmith was widely expected to write a memoir or
autobiography An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...
in the wake of his civil service departure. Instead, he produced a novel about near-future politics called ''Spin'' which was published in 2004, and indirectly led to his employment as an adviser on ''The Thick of It''. His second novel, ''I Heard Lenin Laugh'', was published in 2005. In 2006, he was commissioned by
BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
to present a series of programmes on
Russian poetry This is a list of authors who have written poetry in the Russian language. Alphabetical list A B C D E F G I K L M N O P R S T U V Y Z Sources See also

* List of Russian arc ...
,
literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...
and
art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
, ''Challenging the Silence.'' In 2007, Sixsmith wrote ''The Litvinenko File'', an examination of the feud between the Kremlin and Russia's émigré oligarchs. In 2008 he worked on two BBC documentaries exploring the legacy of the KGB in Russia and also presented a BBC documentary, ''The Snowy Streets of St Petersburg'', about artists and writers who fled the former Eastern bloc. In 2009, ''The Lost Child of Philomena Lee'' was published, about the forcible separation of Philomena Lee and her son,
Michael A. Hess Michael Anthony Hess (born Anthony Lee; 5 July 1952 – 15 August 1995) was an Irish-born American lawyer, deputy chief legal counsel and later chief legal counsel to the Republican National Committee (RNC) in the late 1980s and early 1990s. ...
, by the nuns of Sean Ross Abbey, an Irish convent, during the 1950s, and the subsequent attempts of Lee and Hess to contact one another. In 2010, he wrote ''Putin's Oil'', about Russia's energy wars and their consequences for Moscow and the world. In 2011, Sixsmith presented ''Russia: The Wild East'', a 50-part history of Russia for BBC Radio 4. His book ''Russia, a 1,000-Year Chronicle of the Wild East'' was published by Random House. He continued to work as an adviser to the BBC political sitcom, ''The Thick of It,'' and the Oscar-nominated film, '' In the Loop.'' In 2013, ''The Lost Child of Philomena Lee'' was adapted into the film '' Philomena'', directed by Stephen Frears, starring
Judi Dench Dame Judith Olivia Dench (born 9 December 1934) is an English actress. Regarded as one of Britain's best actresses, she is noted for her versatile work in various films and television programmes encompassing several genres, as well as for her ...
and
Steve Coogan Stephen John Coogan (; born 14 October 1965) is an English actor, comedian, producer and screenwriter. He is most known for creating original characters such as Alan Partridge, a socially inept and politically incorrect media personality, which ...
(as Sixsmith), and written by Coogan and Jeff Pope. It was nominated for four Oscars. In 2014 Sixsmith presented a 25-part BBC Radio 4 series about the history of
psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
and
psychiatry Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psychiatry. Initial psych ...
, ''In Search of Ourselves''. In 2015, he made a BBC television documentary, ''Ireland's Lost Babies'', in which he revisited Philomena's story by travelling to the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
to investigate the Irish Catholic Church’s role in an adoption trade which saw thousands of children taken from their mothers and sent abroad. His 2017 book, ''Ayesha's Gift,'' is the story of a young woman's search to discover the truth about her father, who had been murdered in
Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...
. In 2019, he published ''An Unquiet Heart'', a historical novel based on the life of the Russian poet,
Sergei Yesenin Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin ( rus, Сергей Александрович Есенин, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej ɐlʲɪkˈsandrəvʲɪtɕ jɪˈsʲenʲɪn; ( 1895 – 28 December 1925), sometimes spelled as Esenin, was a Russian lyric poet. He is one o ...
, and his stormy love affair with the actress
Zinaida Raikh Zinaida Nikolayevna Reich (the last name also spelled Raikh or Raih; russian: Зинаида Николаевна Райх; – 15 July 1939) was a Russian actress and one of the main stars of the Meyerhold Theatre until it was closed under Jose ...
. His latest book, ''The War of Nerves'' (2021), is an account of the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
in terms of the psychology of the leaders on both sides.


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sixsmith, Martin 1954 births Living people Harvard University alumni University of Paris alumni British male journalists People educated at Manchester Grammar School Alumni of New College, Oxford 21st-century British writers BBC newsreaders and journalists BBC radio presenters Labour Party (UK) officials Writers from Cheshire General Electric Company People from Warrington Writers about Russia Alumni of the University of London Alumni of London Metropolitan University