Education

Sixsmith was born in Cheshire and educated at the Manchester Grammar School

Manchester Grammar School

The Manchester Grammar School is the largest independent day school for boys in the UK . It is based in Manchester, England...

 where he studied Russian to O-level, and subsequently A-level, then at Oxford, Harvard

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

, the Sorbonne

University of Paris

The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...

 University in Paris, and in St. Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

 (then Leningrad), in Russia. He was a Slavics Tutor at Harvard and wrote his postgraduate thesis about Russian poetry.

Career and the writings

Sixsmith joined the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 in 1980 where he worked as a foreign correspondent, most notably reporting from Moscow during the end of the Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

. He also reported from Poland during the Solidarity uprising and was the BBC’s Washington correspondent during the election and first presidency of Bill Clinton. He left the BBC in 1997 to work for the newly elected government of Tony Blair. He became Director of Communications (a civil service post), working first with Harriet Harman

Harriet Harman

Harriet Ruth Harman QC is a British Labour Party politician, who is the Member of Parliament for Camberwell and Peckham, and was MP for the predecessorPeckham constituency from 1982 to 1997...

, and Frank Field

Frank Field

Francis or Frank Field may refer to:*Frank Field *Frank Field *Frank Field - English cricketer who took over 1,000 first-class wickets...

, then with Alistair Darling

Alistair Darling

Alistair Maclean Darling is a Scottish Labour Party politician who has been a Member of Parliament since 1987, currently for Edinburgh South West. He served as the Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2007 to 2010...

. His next position was as a Director of GEC plc, where he oversaw the rebranding of the company as Marconi plc.

In December 2001, he returned to the Civil Service to join the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions

Department for Transport

In the United Kingdom, the Department for Transport is the government department responsible for the English transport network and a limited number of transport matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which are not devolved...

 as Director of Communications in time to become embroiled in the second act of the scandal over Jo Moore

Jo Moore

Jo Moore served as a British special adviser and press officer . She was embroiled in scandal while working as advisor to Stephen Byers, the Transport, Local Government and Regions Secretary....

. Moore was special adviser to the transport secretary Stephen Byers

Stephen Byers

Stephen John Byers is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament for North Tyneside from 1997 to 2010; in the previous parliament, from 1992, he represented Wallsend...

 and had been the subject of much public condemnation for suggesting that a controversial announcement should be "buried" during the media coverage of the September 11, 2001 attacks

September 11, 2001 attacks

The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...

.

Sixsmith was widely expected to write a memoir or autobiography in the wake of his civil service departure, but was gagged by the government. Instead, he produced a novel about near-future politics called Spin which was published in 2004.

His second novel, I Heard Lenin Laugh, was published in 2005. In 2006 he was commissioned by BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

 to present a series of programmes on Russian poetry, literature and art.

In 2007 he published The Litvinenko File, an examination of the feud between the Kremlin and Russia’s émigré oligarchs.

In February 2008 Sixsmith worked on two BBC documentaries exploring the legacy of the KGB in today’s Russia and also presented a BBC radio programme, The Snowy Streets of St. Petersburg, about artists and writers who fled the former Eastern bloc.

In 2009 he published The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, a non-fiction book about the forcible separation of a mother and child by the nuns of an Irish convent during the 1950s, and their subsequent attempts to contact one another. A film of the book is currently in production with the London based Baby Cow Pictures.

In February 2010 he published Putin’s Oil, about Russia’s energy wars and their consequences for Moscow and the world.

He works as an advisor to the BBC political sitcom The Thick of It

The Thick of It

The Thick of It is a British comedy television series that satirises the inner workings of modern British government. It was first broadcast on BBC Four in 2005, and has so far completed fourteen half-hour episodes and two special hour-long episodes to coincide with Christmas and Gordon Brown's...

, and the Oscar nominated film, In the Loop

In the Loop (film)

In the Loop is a 2009 British satirical black comedy film directed by Armando Iannucci. It is based on the BBC Television series The Thick of It satirising Anglo-American politics in the 21st century and the Invasion of Iraq...

. In 2011, he presented Russia: The Wild East, a 50-part history of Russia for BBC Radio 4, the last episode of which was broadcast on 12 August.

External links

• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml;jsessionid=SUFLRRNBXTTK5QFIQMFSFFOAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/arts/2006/07/23/bosix16.xml&sSheet=/arts/2006/07/23/bomain.html
• http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,,1807745,00.html
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/jun/28/television.books
• http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/history/0,,1815364,00.html
• http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/32105
• http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1820543,00.html
• http://www.panmacmillan.com/News/displayPage.asp?PageTitle=CPS%20request%20extradition%20of%20former%20KGB%20officer
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/05/03/bosix28.xml
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2007/05/03/bosix28.xml
• http://www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?BookId=134278&SubjectId=1023&Subject2Id=922
• http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/funny-business-henry-normal-explains-why-his-new-project-is-no-joke-2021124.html