Iain Hollingshead

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Iain Hollingshead (born October 31, 1980) is a British freelance journalist and novelist.

Iain writes feature articles for a range of publications, The Daily Telegraph in particular. Until recently, he also wrote a regular column called Loose Ends in Saturday's Guardian. He has taken part in a number of radio shows, including BBC Radio 4's Today programme and You and Yours.

Iain graduated from Cambridge University in 2003 with a first class degree in History. He worked for a year in Westminster - at Vote 2004 and the private office of Michael Howard - before pursuing a full-time career as a journalist. Vote 2004 was described in the Sunday Telegraph as the "most successful political campaign of all time". [1]

Iain was runner-up in the Guardian Student Media Awards as Columnist of the Year.[2]While at university he also founded and edited The Cambridge Slapper - a popular satirical magazine.

His first novel, Twenty Something: The Quarter-life Crisis of Jack Lancaster was published in 2006 by Gerald Duckworth and Company Ltd. The book won him the 2006 infamous literary Bad Sex in Fiction Award, which he accepted in person announcing "I hope to win it every year". [3] He is the youngest author to have won the somewhat dubious honour.

Overall the novel was well received, drawing critics' comparison with Sue Townsend, Helen Fielding and Tony Parsons. A review in The Independent stated,

"I know what you're thinking. The fictional diary format is one quite a few writers think they can have a crack at, yet only a few really succeed. However, Iain Hollingshead joins the select few - take a bow, Sue Townsend and Helen Fielding - to pull it off …(and he) writes very well indeed: sharp, exceptionally observant and consistently amusing."[4]

While Times columnist Matthew Parris said simply,

"There is something wonderful about this book. Hollingshead writes with the cynicism of many clever young men, but the passion of very few."[5]

Iain was listed as one of the E.S. Magazine’s top '50 Brit Young Things' of 2006. He is currently working on his second novel, and has a three-book deal to write fictionalised spin-offs of the TV series Spooks. [6]