Jack Fairweather (born in 1978), is a British journalist and author.
Early life
editFairweather was born in Shrewsbury, England in 1978.[1] His sister, Chloé Fairweather, directed Dying to Divorce, a film selected as the British entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 94th Academy Awards in 2021.[2] He was educated at Atlantic College, and at Lincoln College at the University of Oxford.[3]
Career
editFairweather was a freelance correspondent embedded with British troops during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He was a stringer for The Daily Telegraph in Baghdad, where he met his wife Christina Asquith, a journalist working on contract to cover education issues in Iraq for New York Times.[3] Fairweather claims he survived an attempted kidnapping and an attempted suicide bombing in Iraq.[3]
He later contributed freelance articles from Afghanistan to the PostGlobal blog hosted by The Washington Post.[3] His war coverage has won a British Press Award and an Overseas Press Club award citation.[4]
His book The Volunteer, a biography about Witold Pilecki, a Polish resistance fighter who infiltrated Auschwitz during the Holocaust and Second World War, won the 2019 Costa Book Award.[5][6] "Witold Pilecki is a man whose footsteps I was following for 5 years. He is an extraordinary human being who exposed himself to the worst danger in Auschwitz and he risked his life in so many ways to report what was happening in Auschwitz. He made up a group of people who smuggled news to get them out from the camp"[7]
Books
edit- A War of Choice: the British in Iraq 2003-9 (Vintage, 2012)[8][9][10]
- The Good War: Why We Couldn’t Win the War or the Peace in Afghanistan, by Jack Fairweather, (Basic Books, 2014)[11][12][13]
- The Volunteer: One Man's Mission to Lead an Underground Army Inside Auschwitz and Stop the Holocaust (Custom House, 2019)[3][14][15]
- A Rebel in Auschwitz: The True Story of the Resistance Hero who Fought the Nazis From Inside the Camp (Scholastic Focus, 2021)
Awards
editThe Good War was a finalist for the 2015 Lionel Gelber Prize.[16]
The Volunteer won the Costa Book of the Year Award 2019.[4]
References
edit- ^ "Costa Book Awards 2019: Category Winners Announced". Costa. Retrieved 29 June 2021.
- ^ "Dying to Divorce". IMDb.
- ^ a b c d e Picard, Ken (19 June 2019). "Jack Fairweather Writes Story of Unsung Hero at Auschwitz". Seven Days. Retrieved 25 June 2019.
- ^ a b Christian, Bonnie (28 January 2020). "Jack Fairweather wins Costa Book of the Year with The Volunteer". Evening Standard. London. Retrieved 29 June 2021.
- ^ "'Lost' story of Auschwitz hero wins Costa Prize". BBC News. 29 January 2020. Retrieved 29 January 2020.
- ^ Bakare, Lanre (28 January 2020). "Costa prize: Jack Fairweather wins book of the year with The Volunteer". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 29 January 2020.
- ^ Jack Fairweather - Hyde Park Civilizace | Česká televize (in Czech), retrieved 12 July 2023
- ^ "A War of Choice (brief review)". The Independent. 6 October 2012.
- ^ Hastings, Max (23 October 2011). "A War of Choice (book review)". The Times. Retrieved 25 June 2019.
- ^ Rayment, Sean (6 January 2012). "A War of Choice: the British in Iraq 2003-9 (book review)". The Telegraph. Retrieved 25 June 2019.
- ^ Mallet, Victor (5 December 2014). "The Good War (book review)". Financial Times. London. Retrieved 25 June 2019.
- ^ Farmer, Ben (4 December 2014). "The Good War: the Battle for Afghanistan 2006–14; book review: 'sobering and riveting'". The Telegraph. Retrieved 25 June 2019.
- ^ "How the West Failed Afghanistan (book review)". New Statesman. 11 June 2015. Retrieved 25 June 2019.
- ^ name="TfNhorrors"
- ^ "The man who volunteered for Auschwitz: New bio explores extraordinary life of hero who exposed Holocaust horrors". THEfirstNEWS. 26 June 2019. Retrieved 26 June 2019.
- ^ Wittmeyer, Alicia Q. (25 March 2015). "Introducing the 2015 Lionel Gelber Finalists. Today's Nominee: Jack Fairweather". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 26 June 2019.