Martin Sixsmith

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Martin Sixsmith (born 1954) is a British author, journalist and radio/ television presenter.

Sixsmith was born in Cheshire. He was educated at the Manchester Grammar School, a famous British Independent school, and then at Oxford University, Harvard University, the University of Paris, Sorbonne and in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), in Russia. He was a Slavics Tutor at Harvard (Adams House) and wrote his postgraduate thesis about Russian poetry. Sixsmith joined the BBC in 1980 where he worked as a foreign correspondent, with postings in Brussels, Geneva, Warsaw, Moscow (twice) and Washington. He reported from Poland during the Solidarity uprising; from Moscow during the end of the Cold War, the era of Perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1991 coup; and from Washington during the election and first presidency of Bill Clinton. He left the BBC in 1997 to work for the newly elected government of Tony Blair. He become Director of Communications (a Senior Civil Service post) and Press Secretary to Harriet Harman and then to Alistair Darling. His next position was as a Director of GEC plc, where he oversaw the rebranding of the company as Marconi plc.

In December 2001, he returned to the Civil Service and joined the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions as Director of Communications, just in time to become embroiled in the second act of the scandal over Jo Moore. Moore was special adviser to the transport secretary Stephen Byers and had been the subject of much public condemnation for suggesting that a controversial announcement should be "buried" during the media coverage of the September 11, 2001 attacks. In February 2002 the row flared up again when a leak to the press alleged that Moore had made further attempts to "bury" bad news on the day of a major event and that Sixsmith had intervened to stop her. It was backed up by a copy of an email from Sixsmith saying "Princess Margaret is being buried [on Friday]. I will absolutely not allow anything else to be". Byers went on television to announce the resignations of both Moore and Sixsmith, but a week later Sixsmith gave an interview in which he said he had not resigned and was being forced out in order to cover up the conduct of Moore and Byers. On 7 May the DTLR admitted Sixsmith had not resigned on 15 February and that "no blame is being apportioned" for the "unfortunate events" of February, a position which a House of Commons committee noted as being incompatible with the department's earlier announcement that Sixsmith's position had been untenable.

Sixsmith was widely expected to write a memoir or autobiography in the wake of his departure; instead he produced a novel about near-future politics called Spin. He is currently working as an adviser to the writing team of the BBC political sitcom The Thick of It. His second novel, "I Heard Lenin Laugh", was published in 2005 and his examination of the feud between the Kremlin and Russia's emigre oligarchs, "The Litvinenko File" came out in 2007. He is again an active journalist and broadcaster, presenting programmes about literature and music on BBC Radio Four and BBC Radio Three.

Martin Sixsmith currently resides in London. He is an avid Liverpool F.C fan, having attended the Rome, Brussels, Istanbul and Athens finals of the European Champions League/ European Cup.

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