Melanie McFadyean

Melanie McFadyean is a British journalist and lecturer, who has written for a wide range of publications, including The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times, The Independent, particularly about social injustice, immigration and asylum.[1]

Career

McFadyean holds BA (first-class) and MA degrees in English from Leeds University, and after leaving university taught art and then English in Hackney, London.[2] She served as agony aunt for Just Seventeen magazine on its launch in 1983.[3]

Following time spent in Northern Ireland, she co-wrote the 1984 book Only The Rivers Run Free: Northern Ireland the Women's War, described by The Women's Review of Books as "passionate, compelling and absolutely necessary".[4] She also co-wrote Thatcher's Reign: A Bad Case of the Blues (1984), then published a collection of short stories entitled Hotel Romantika (1986, in the Virago Press Upstarts imprint for teenagers).

As a journalist, McFadyean worked at The Guardian, and has gone on to freelance in radio and television as well as print, writing for such newspapers and journals as The Observer, The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, London Review of Books, Granta, The Independent, and The Oldie. The focus of much of her journalism has been refugees and asylum seekers,[5] and she has spoken of being initially inspired by her own family story: "My mother was a refugee from Nazi Germany. She escaped but she had an aunt and an uncle who didn't, so I grew up with it, knowledge of refugees. But the thing that got me in to it was someone rang me up and asked if I had heard this story about children disappearing? ... I have worked as a teacher, as an agony aunt and always had an affiliation with children, and the idea that children were going missing…"[6]

She was consultant producer on the documentary film Guilty by Association, broadcast on BBC One on 7 July 2014,[7] and on a Channel 4 documentary, The Lost Boy, about missing child Ben Needham, and her radio work encompasses a six-part BBC Radio 4 series about couples who had been together for three decades (Thirty Years and More) and a programme about controversial child diarist Opal Whiteley.[8][9]

For 14 years from 2001 she was a lecturer in investigative journalism at City University's Journalism department.[1] She went on to study for an MA in Conflict Resolution in Divided Societies at King's College London.[1]

Awards

In 2001 McFadyean won a media award from Amnesty International (for a piece about unaccompanied asylum-seeking children that was published in Guardian Weekend) and has since served on their panel of judges.[6][10][1]

Her work as part of an investigation into the law of "joint enterprise" resulted in a report for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism that won the Bar Council Legal Reporting Award 2014.[1][11][12][13]

Personal life

McFadyean is married to Malcolm Blair.[14] Her mother, Marion Guttman, was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who came to England in 1937, and McFadyean's father, international lawyer Colin McFadyean, was a Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve in World War II who was later recruited by Ian Fleming to Naval Intelligence;[15] her parents were married from 1940 until 1960, and he subsequently married Mary Malcolm.[6][16][17][18] Mcfadyean has written about the struggles faced by her father in later life to cope with her stepmother's dementia.[19] McFadyean has written in The Guardian of her own experience of breast cancer.[20][21]

Bibliography

Books
  • (With Eileen Fairweather and Roisin McDonough) Only the Rivers Run Free: Northern Ireland: The Women's War, Pluto Press, 1984, ISBN 0-86104-668-4.
  • (With Margaret Renn) Thatcher's Reign: A Bad Case of the Blues, Chatto & Windus, 1984, ISBN 978-0701128579
  • Hotel Romantika & Other Stories, Virago Upstarts, 1987, ISBN 978-0860689188
  • Drugs Wise: A Practical Guide for Concerned Parents About the Use of Recreational Drugs: A Practical Guide for Concerned Parents About the Use of Illegal Drugs, Icon Books, 1997, ISBN 978-1874166832

Selected articles
  • "More fumble than fun", The Independent, 15 September 1996.[22]
  • "Land of the strange", The Observer, 15 August 1999.
  • "Accidental tourists", The Observer, 14 May 2000.
  • "Human traffic", The Guardian, 9 March 2001.[23]
  • "Kitchen sink drama", The Guardian, 2 April 2002.
  • "Hard labour", The Guardian, 14 September 2002.
  • "A cold shoulder for Saddam's victims", The Guardian, 22 March 2003.
  • "Where am I?", The Guardian, 18 July 2003.
  • "Some kind of asylum", The Guardian, 6 September 2003.
  • "Congratulations – now get out", The Guardian, 12 November 2003.[24]
  • "The legacy of the hunger strikes", The Guardian, 4 March 2006.[25]
  • "Five Houses", Granta, 2 October 2006.
  • "A lapse of humanity", The Guardian, 16 November 2006.[26]
  • "£ ... per incident: suicides in immigration detention", London Review of Books, Vol. 28, No. 22, 16 November 2006.[27]
  • "Relative Values: Kerry Grist and her daughter, Leighanna Needham", The Sunday Times, 23 March 2008.[28]
  • "The lost boy", The Independent, 23 October 2011.[29]
  • "The hunt for Ben Needham and the family that won't give up searching", The Observer, 28 April 2013.[30]
  • "Opinion: 'As I got into the small print of joint enterprise it seemed I had wandered through the looking glass'", The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 31 March 2014.[31]
  • (With Maeve McClenaghan, Rachel Stevenson and Clare Sambrook) "Guilty of choosing the wrong friends: the relentless injustice of 'joint enterprise'", openDemocracy, 4 July 2014.
  • "Compassion in Care", The Oldie, 13 November 2019.[32]

References
  1. "Trustees". Baobab Centre. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  2. "Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism – Members". City, University of London. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  3. McFadyean, Melanie (25 March 2004). "Teen spirit". The Guardian.
  4. Reddy, Maureen T. (October 1988). "Line of Most Resistance". The Women's Review of Books. 6 (1): 9–10. doi:10.2307/4020310. JSTOR 4020310.
  5. Communications team, Philippa (7 December 2010). "Melanie McFadyean: the challenge of changing public and political attitudes to asylum". Refugee Council. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  6. "Interview in an Instant: Melanie McFadyean". Student Action for Refugees (STAR). 23 January 2008. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  7. "Guilty By Association". Two Step Films. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  8. "About". Two Step Films. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  9. "Who Was Opal?". BBC Radio 4. 2010. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  10. "Amnesty International Media Awards 2005 shortlists announced". Amnesty International. 22 August 2005. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  11. McClenaghan, Maeve; Melanie McFadyean; Rachel Stevenson (31 March 2014). "Revealed: thousands prosecuted under controversial law". The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  12. "Bar Council announces legal reporting awards" Archived 16 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine, General Council of the Bar, 10 November 2014.
  13. "Our awards". The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  14. "The story of Penelope Chetwode | note by Malcolm Blair". A Taste of Life. 25 April 2013.
  15. Fry, Helen (1 February 2014). "In Conversation with Melanie McFadyean". Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  16. McFadyean, Melanie (6 July 2002). "A Private War". The Guardian Weekend. p. 49.
  17. "Colin McFadyean". The Times. 12 June 2007.
  18. McFadyean, Melanie (10 February 2007). "The Nazis sent him written demands for atonement of being Jewish". The Guardian.
  19. McFadyean, Melanie (20 August 2005). "Losing our minds". The Guardian.
  20. McFadyean, Melanie (22 January 2005). "Who knew?". The Guardian.
  21. McFadyean, Melanie (17 October 2012). "If breast cancer is on the rise, we must find a way to pay for it". The Guardian.
  22. McFadyean, Melanie (15 September 1996). "More fumble than fun". The Independent.
  23. McFadyean, Melanie (9 March 2001). "Human traffic". The Guardian.
  24. McFadyean, Melanie (12 November 2003). "Congratulations – now get out". The Guardian.
  25. MccFadyean, Melanie (4 March 2006). "The legacy of the hunger strikes". The Guardian.
  26. McFadyean, Melanie (16 November 2006). "A lapse of humanity". The Guardian.
  27. "£ ... per incident". London Review of Books. 28 (22). 16 November 2006.
  28. "Relative Values: Kerry Grist and her daughter, Leighanna Needham". The Sunday Times. 23 March 2008.
  29. McFadyean, Melanie (23 October 2011). "The lost boy". The Independent.
  30. McFadyean, Melanie (28 April 2013). "The hunt for Ben Needham and the family that won't give up searching". The Observer.
  31. McClenaghan, Maeve; Melanie McFadyean; Rachel Stevenson (31 March 2014). "Opinion: 'As I got into the small print of joint enterprise it seemed I had wandered through the looking glass'". The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  32. McFadyean, Melanie (13 November 2019). "Compassion in Care". The Oldie.
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