Biography

NAME: Stephen Dorril

STATUS: Senior Lecturer in Print Journalism in the Media Department and Head of Music Journalism and Film Journalism at Huddersfield University

AGE: 50 BORN: 7 July1955, Worcestershire

Background

Author, researcher and investigative journalist.

Written articles for the major newspapers and appeared on radio and television programmes as a consultant and specialist on the security and intelligence services.

Consultant to BBC's Panorama programme (MI6), Channel Four's Media Show (Profumo Affair), Secret History (Harold Wilson, The sinking of the Struma), Channel Five (British Intelligence), Hungarian and Canadian television, and appeared in numerous other documentaries on such topics as codes, technical intelligence, Cold War and Northern Ireland.

Also regularly appeared on Radio Four's The Message, The World at One, Front Row, Radio 3's Night Waves; Scottish radio news programmes and documentaries.

In the past a consultant and researcher to the Co-operative Bank on the arms trade and 'Killing Secrets' campaign.

Researcher for newspapers, and for authors, including Anthony Summers (Marilyn Monroe, J Edgar Hoover) and Paul Routledge (Peter Mandelson and Airey Neave).

Co-Founder/Editor of Lobster, journal covering the activities of the British security and intelligence services.

Research

My particular interests in the intelligence field are the relationship between the secret agencies (primarily British), government, politicians and policy-makers, both at an individual and bureaucratic level.

Within media, I am principally interested in print journalism. In particular, the role of propaganda, the relationship between journalists and the intelligence agencies, and investigative journalism. Also cultural areas such as film and music.

I am currently working on 'The dogs in the street say…' British Intelligence and Ireland, 1966-2008 to be published by Fourth Estate in 2008; a new updated version of Honeytrap and Gladio: MI6 and the European Stay-Behind Networks.

Ongoing research - the post-Second World War relationship between newspapers, news agencies, journalists and the security services.

Books Published

Honeytrap: The Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward (with Anthony Summers)(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987)

Smear!: Wilson and the Secret State (with Robin Ramsay) (Fourth Estate, 1991)

The Silent Conspiracy: The Intelligence Services in the 1990s (Heinemann, 1993)

MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations (Fourth Estate, 2000)

Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism (Viking/Penguin, 2006)


Stephen's dog, Roger, is now seventeen years. The famous "rodent catcher" is still rooting out secrets.