Dr Jeremy Paxman

Jeremy Paxman is an award-winning journalist, author and television presenter.  Beginning his career covering The Troubles in Northern Ireland for three years, he then spent 8 years reporting from around the world for the BBC, before becoming anchorman of the BBC’s nightly news analysis programme, Newsnight in 1989, a post he held for 25 years. He has been chairman of University Challenge since 1994. He is the author of numerous documentaries and documentary series – on the history of the British Empire, on the poet Wilfred Owen, on Victorian art, on Churchill’s funeral and on the effect of the First World War on Great Britain. 

His 2014 one-man show PAXO at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe was a critically acclaimed sell-out. 

Jeremy Paxman was born in Yorkshire in 1950 and educated at Malvern College in Worcestershire and received his degree from St Catharine's in 1972. As well as being an Honorary Fellow of St Catharine's, he is also a Fellow by Special Election at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He holds honorary doctorates from Leeds, Bradford and the Open University.

He is the author of ten books, including The English - Portrait of a People; The Political Animal; On Royalty; The Victorians; Empire - What Ruling the World Did to the British. Great Britain’s Great War was published in October 2013.

He is a contributing editor at the Financial Times.

His charitable interests include homelessness, mental health and education. 

In his spare time, he goes fly-fishing and is the editor of Fish, Fishing and the Meaning of Life.

Photo credit: Chris Floyd

• A Higher Form of Killing (with Robert Harris)
• Through the Volcanoes: A Central American Journey
• Friends in High Places: Who Runs Britain?
• Fish, Fishing and the Meaning of Life
• The English: A Portrait of a People
• The Victorians
• Empire: What Ruling the World Did to the British
• Great Britain's Great War
• A Life in Questions