Andrew Roth (23 April 1919, New York City – 12 August 2010) was a biographer and journalist known for his compilation of Parliamentary Profiles, a directory of British Members of Parliament, which is available online in The Guardian.[1] A well known figure amongst the politicians and journalists in Westminster for fifty years, he was also known for his appearances on British television.
He scoured Hansard, gossip columns, vote papers, and committee reports to compile his profiles of the personnel of the U.K. Parliament and assessed their character traits, history, opinions, and psychological drives. The profiles also included cartoon caricatures by Terry Roth.
Roth's detailed obituaries were composed for international and national figures of note, using the skills and information he collected in his biographical research. A catalogue of his published obituaries in the archives of The Guardian provides an insightful and historical perspective to contemporary news as the deaths of the noteworthy are documented and he reviews their lives.
He was born to Hungarian parents in New York and attended City College, Columbia, Michigan, and Harvard universities where he studied Far Eastern History. During 1940, he was a researcher at the Institute of Pacific Relations.[2] He served as a Lieutenant with U.S. Naval Intelligence in World War II. In June 1945, he and five others were arrested during an FBI investigation into the leaking of documents to the journal, Amerasia. He subsequently was cleared.[3]
Roth was a journalist and foreign correspondent in twenty countries before settling in the United Kingdom in 1950. He was political correspondent for the Manchester Evening News from 1972-1984, contributed to the New Statesman from 1984-1997, and was an obituarist and contributor to The Guardian from 1996.
Roth had a son, Neil, a daughter, Terry, and three grandchildren. He died of prostate cancer at the age of 91 [4] [5].