Miranda Sawyer

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Miranda Sawyer
Sawyer at the 2018 British Podcast Awards
Born
Miranda Caroline Sawyer

(1967-01-07) 7 January 1967 (age 57)[1]
Bristol, England[1]
EducationCheadle Hulme School
Alma materUniversity of Oxford (BA)
OccupationJournalist
Employers
Spouse
(m. 2007)
[1]
Children2
Websitemirandasawyer.com

Miranda Caroline Sawyer (born 7 January 1967)[1] is an English author, journalist and broadcaster.[2][3][4][5]

Education and early life[edit]

Sawyer was born in Bristol[1] and grew up in Wilmslow, Cheshire with her brother Toby, who is an actor.[citation needed] Sawyer was educated at Cheadle Hulme School,[6] a private school in Stockport, and was awarded a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in Jurisprudence from the University of Oxford where she was an undergraduate student of Pembroke College, Oxford.[1]

Career[edit]

Sawyer moved to London in 1988 to begin a career as a journalist with the magazine Smash Hits. In 1993, she became the youngest winner of the Periodical Publishers Association Magazine Writer of the Year award for her work on Select magazine. She wrote columns for Time Out (1993–96) and the Daily Mirror (2000–2003), and was a frequent contributor to Mixmag and The Face during the 1990s.

As of August 2021, Sawyer is a feature writer for The Guardian and The Observer and serves as a radio critic.[7] Her work has been published in GQ, Vogue and The Guardian and she is a regular arts critic in print, on television and on radio. She served as a member of the judging panel for the 2007 Turner Prize and the panel that awarded Liverpool its European Capital of Culture status in 2008.

In 2004, Sawyer wrote, researched and presented an hour-long documentary for Channel 4 about the age of consent, Writing in The Guardian in 2003 an article entitled sex is not just for grown-ups she argued for the age of consent to be reduced to 12.[8][9] In 2007, she presented a highly personal documentary for More4 on abortion rights in the US, A Matter of Life and Death, as part of its Travels with My Camera strand.[10]

Sawyer interrogated Russell Brand for The Guardian in the aftermath of the Russell Brand Show prank calls row.[11]

She has been an occasional guest on the UK arts programme Newsnight Review and The Culture Show on BBC Two, and also BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 6 Music's Radcliffe and Maconie Show. She also took part in a celebrity edition of BBC Two's afternoon quiz show The Weakest Link.

Her first book Park and Ride, a travel book on the Great British suburbs, was published by Little, Brown and Company in 1999.[12] Her second book Out of Time on the midlife crisis was published by HarperCollins in 2016.[13]

Personal life[edit]

Sawyer married the Belfast-born comedian and actor Michael Smiley in 2007.[1] The couple have two children.[14] In 2014, she appeared in The Life of Rock with Brian Pern as herself.[15]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Anon (2010). "Sawyer, Miranda Caroline". Who's Who (online Oxford University Press ed.). Oxford: A & C Black. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U251619. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ Miranda Sawyer at The Observer
  3. ^ Miranda Sawyer at IMDb
  4. ^ Sound and Vision (BBC Radio 6 Music)
  5. ^ "Miranda Sawyer Newsnight presenter profile". BBC. 24 May 2002. Retrieved 26 April 2010.
  6. ^ "Students Given Expert Creative Career Advice". Cheadle Hulme School. 12 May 2016. [dead link]
  7. ^ Sawyer, Miranda (2021). "Billie Eilish Interview: To always try to look good is such a loss of joy and freedom". The Guardian.
  8. ^ Sawyer, Miranda (2 November 2003). "Sex is not just for grown-ups". The Observer – via www.theguardian.com.
  9. ^ Sex Before 16: How the Law Is Failing
  10. ^ Moran, Caitlin (13 April 2007). "Abortion: why it's the ultimate motherly act". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 27 September 2019.
  11. ^ "Brand on the run". TheGuardian.com. 9 November 2008.
  12. ^ Sawyer, Miranda (1999). Park and Ride. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0316645753.
  13. ^ Sawyer, Miranda (2016). Out of Time: midlife, if you still think you're young. HarperCollins Publishers Australia. ISBN 978-0007521074. OCLC 1023233653.
  14. ^ Carpenter, Louise (26 June 2016). "Miranda Sawyer: How I banished my mid-life blues and learned to live in the present". The Daily Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 27 September 2019.
  15. ^ "Brian Pern The Life of Rock with Brian Pern, Episode 3 - Part Three: Death of Rock". British Comedy Guide. Retrieved 27 September 2019.