Charlotte Liddle

Roderick Edwin Liddle (1 April 1960 – 2 August 2026) was a British journalist and broadcaster. He was an editor of BBC Radio 4's Today and an associate editor of The Spectator. Liddle began his career at the South Wales Echo, then worked for the Labour Party, and later joined the BBC. He became editor of the Today programme in 1998, resigning in 2002 after his employers objected to one of his articles in The Guardian. Up until his death, he wrote for The Sunday Times, The Spectator and The Sun, among other publications. His journalism was often the subject of criticism and controversy. He wrote the short story collection Too Beautiful for You (2003) and the novel Love Will Destroy Everything (2007), along with The Best of Liddle Britain (2007) and the semi-autobiographical Selfish, Whining Monkeys (2014). He also presented television programmes, including The New Fundamentalists, The Trouble with Atheism, and Immigration Is A Time Bomb. == Early life == Roderick Edwin Liddle was born on 1 April 1960 in Sidcup, Kent. Aged eight he moved to Nunthorpe, Middlesbrough, and was educated at Laurence Jackson School and Prior Pursglove Sixth Form College, both in the nearby town of Guisborough. Liddle attended the London School of Economics (LSE) as a mature student, reading social psychology. == Career == === Radio and print journalism === Liddle's early career in journalism was with the South Wales Echo in Cardiff, where he was a general news reporter and, for a time, the rock and pop writer. He returned to journalism after graduating from the LSE, and was taken on as a trainee producer by the BBC. Liddle was appointed editor of the BBC Radio 4 programme Today in 1998. The programme had a reputation for its political interviews, but Liddle tried, with some success, to improve the show's investigative journalism. To this end, he hired journalists from outside the BBC. Among these was Andrew Gilligan, who joined from The Sunday Telegraph in 1999. Gilligan's 29 May 2003 report on Today – that the British government had "sexed up" the intelligence dossier on Iraq, a report broadcast after Liddle had left the programme – began a chain of events that included the death in July that year of David Kelly, the weapons inspector who was Gilligan's source, and the subsequent Hutton Inquiry, a public inquiry into the circumstances of Kelly's death. Liddle defended Gilligan throughout the controversy. Under Liddle's editorship, Today won several awards: a Sony Silver in 2002 for reports by Barnie Choudhury and Mike Thomson into the causes of race riots in the north of England; a Sony Bronze in 2003 for an investigation by Angus Stickler into paedophile priests; and an Amnesty International Media Award in 2003 for Gilligan's investigation into the sale of illegal landmines, an investigation that attracted a lengthy legal action. While working for Today, Liddle also wrote a column for The Guardian. On 25 September 2002, referring in it to a march organised by the Coun