Sarah Sands

Sarah Sands (née Harvey; 3 June 1961) is a British journalist and author who is the editor of the London Evening Standard.

Early life and education

Sands is the younger sister of Kit Hesketh-Harvey (of musical duo Kit and The Widow). She was born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent in 1961, and was educated at Kent College, Pembury (then a Methodist, now interdenominational) independent day and boarding school for girls. She later attended Goldsmiths, University of London.

Life and career

Sands trained on The Sevenoaks Chronicle as a news reporter, before moving to the Evening Standard, initially as editor of the Londoner's Diary, before taking further posts as features editor and associate editor. She joined The Daily Telegraph in 1996 as deputy editor, under Charles Moore, later assuming responsibility for the Saturday edition.

Sands was appointed the first female editor of The Sunday Telegraph in June 2005, succeeding Dominic Lawson. Her masterplan for the November 2005 relaunch of the paper was that it should be "like an iPod – full of your favourite things". In an abrupt move, after just eight months and 20 days in post, Sands was sacked as editor of the newspaper on 7 March 2006 and replaced by Patience Wheatcroft. Subsequently, many of her changes under her editorship were reversed (including changes to the title font).

Sands has written two novels: her first was Playing the Game and her second, Hothouse, was published during the summer of 2005.

Later career

In April 2006, Sands was appointed consultant editor on the Daily Mail; in February 2008 she was appointed editor-in-chief of the UK edition of Reader's Digest.

In August 2006, Sands wrote an article about the emo musical genre, which stated that Green Day and My Chemical Romance encourage self-harm among teenagers. My Chemical Romance, on hearing about this article while on tour in the UK, led a chant of "fuck the Daily Mail" (as Sands's article ran in this newspaper) during one of their live shows. Kerrang! magazine in particular took offence at the article.

In February 2009 it was announced that she would be taking up the role of deputy editor on London Evening Standard. She became editor of the London Evening Standard following Geordie Greig's departure for the Mail on Sunday in March 2012.

In January 2017, she was appointed editor of the BBC Radio 4 Today programme and will take up her appointment later in the year after leaving her current post.