Meet the judges for 2001
Andrew Marr
Andrew Marr (Chair) has been a political columnist for The Scotsman, The Economist, The Independent, The Express and The Observer. He was editor of The Independent from 1996-8 and has won two 'Columnist of the Year' awards. He has published three books - The Battle for Scotland (Penguin 1992), Ruling Britannia (Michael Joseph/Penguin 1995/6) and The Day Britain Died (Profile, 2000). He has made numerous radio and television programmes, including BBC2's The Battle for Ideas and Channel 4's What if John Smith had Lived? Last summer, he joined the BBC as Political Editor. He is married to Jackie Ashley, broadcaster and political editor of the New Statesman. They have three children and live in West London.
Niall Ferguson
Niall Ferguson is Professor of Political and Financial History at Oxford University, Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Jesus College, Oxford and currently Visiting Professor of Economics at the Leonard Stern Business School, New York University. His books include Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation 1897-1927 (1995), shortlisted for the History Today Book of the Year award, Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals (1997), a collection of essays he edited, The Pity of War: Explaining World War One (1998) and The World’s Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild (1998) which won the Wadsworth Prize for Business History. He has just published The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000. He is a regular contributor to BBC television and radio, and recently wrote and presented the Radio 4 series Days that Shook the World. He lives with his wife and three children in Oxfordshire.
Steve Jones
Steve Jones is Professor of Genetics at University College London. He gave the BBC Reith Lectures in 1991, and presented a successful BBC TV series, In the Blood on human genetics and evolution in 1996. He is a regular broadcaster and columnist including View from the Lab for the Daily Telegraph. His books include The Language of the Genes (which won the1994 RhÛne-Poulenc Science Book Prize), In The Blood(shortlisted for the 1997 RhÛne-Poulenc) and Almost Like a Whale: The Origin of Species Updated which won the 1999 BP Natural World Book Prize. In 1997 he won the Royal Society Faraday Medal for the Public Understanding of Science.
Annalena McAfee
Annalena McAfee is the Editor of the Guardian's Saturday Review. She was previously Arts and Literary Editor of the Financial Times. She trained as a junior reporter on local papers and went on to work on several daily and Sunday newspapers including the Evening Standard, where she was Arts Editor, theatre critic and features writer. She has previously been a judge for the Perrier Comedy Awards, the South Bank Show Awards and the Forward Poetry Prize. She is the author of seven children's books.
Suzanna Taverne
Suzanna Taverne attended Oxford University where she studied Modern History. Currently Managing Director of the British Museum, she has previously been Managing Director of FT Finance, Consultant to the Chairman and Chief Executive for Saatchi & Saatchi plc and Finance Director of The Independent. She is married with two children and serves as Vice-Chair of the Board for the National Council for One Parent Families.