Mary Ann Sieghart

Mary Ann Corinna Howard Sieghart (born 6 August 1961) is an English journalist, radio presenter and former assistant editor of The Times, where she wrote columns about politics, social affairs and life in general. She has also written a weekly political column in The Independent.
On BBC Radio 4, she is an occasional presenter of Start the Week and has also presented Profile, One to One and Beyond Westminster, as well as one-off documentaries. She chairs the Social Market Foundation, an independent think tank. She is also a non-executive director of the Ofcom Content Board and two FTSE investment trusts.

Early life and education

Sieghart was born in Hammersmith, London in 1961, the daughter of Paul Sieghart, a human rights lawyer, campaigner, broadcaster and author, and Felicity Ann Sieghart, chairman of the National Association for Gifted Children, magistrate and later managing director of the Aldeburgh Cinema. Her older brother is William Sieghart. She attended Cobham Hall and Bedales School. She won a scholarship to Wadham College, Oxford when she was 16, and graduated with a first-class degree.

Health

Suffering from the medical condition prosopagnosia (face blindness), she and several members of her family struggle to recognise faces.

Career

After Oxford, Sieghart joined The Financial Times, where she became Eurobond Correspondent and then a Lex columnist. She spent a summer in 1984 working for The Washington Post, as the Laurence Stern Fellow. From the FT, she was recruited to be City Editor of Today newspaper at its launch in 1986. When it was taken over by Tiny Rowland, she moved to The Economist to be Political Correspondent. She also presented The World This Week on Channel 4.

In 1988, she joined The Times, as editor of the comment pages. During her time there, she was also Arts Editor, Chief Political leader-writer and acting editor of the paper on Sundays. In 1995, she chaired the revival of The Brains Trust on BBC2.

In 2003, Bill Hagerty, editor of the British Journalism Review, described Sieghart as "very talented" but criticised her assumption that broadsheet journalism in newspapers like The Times was intrinsically better or more effective than tabloid journalism.

In 2007, she left The Times to pursue a portfolio career. From 2010 to 2012, she wrote the main opinion column in The Independent on Mondays.

Sieghart is a regular broadcaster. She currently presents Start the Week on Radio 4 and presented Newshour on the BBC World Service from 2008 to 2010: until recently she presented Profile, One to One and Beyond Westminster on Radio 4. She has often appeared on programmes such as Question Time, Any Questions, Newsnight, Today, The World Tonight and Woman's Hour. She was a regular co-presenter of Start the Week during the time Melvyn Bragg was the programme's main presenter and has been a guest presenter of The Week in Westminster and Dispatch Box.

Other activities

Sieghart is chair of the Social Market Foundation, a non-executive director of The Merchants Trust, Henderson Smaller Companies Investment Trust and DLN Digital Ltd, and sits on the Council of Tate Modern and the Content Board of Ofcom. She is a trustee of the Kennedy Memorial Trust and has previously served as a trustee of the Radcliffe Trust, Heritage Lottery Fund, steering committee member of the No Campaign and New Europe, member of the Advisory Board of the Social Studies Faculty at Oxford University and various other voluntary posts.