Last updated September 2008
Category: News;
Radio 4
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Edward Stourton joined the presentation team of BBC Radio 4's Today programme in January 1999.
Edward was born in Lagos, Nigeria in November 1957.
Educated first at Ampleforth College and then at Trinity College, Cambridge, he took a degree in English Literature before joining ITN as a graduate trainee in 1979.
He was a founder member of Channel 4 News in 1982, working as a scriptwriter then producer, duty home news editor and chief sub-editor.
Edward reported from Beirut for the first time in 1983 and spent most of the next decade covering foreign news.
In 1986, he was appointed Channel 4's Washington Correspondent, covering the final years of the Reagan presidency and the 1988 presidential campaign.
He also presented special programmes on the Iran-Contra scandal.
In 1988 Stourton joined the BBC as Paris Correspondent.
In 1990 he returned to ITN as Diplomatic Editor, and during his three years in the job he reported from Baghdad during the Gulf War, from Bosnia during the siege of Sarajevo, from Moscow in the final days of the Soviet Union and from Europe throughout the negotiations leading up to the Maastricht summit.
In 1993 he returned to the BBC to the One O'Clock News, which he presented for six years.
He has also presented editions of Correspondent, Assignment and Panorama, and the phone-in programme Call Ed Stourton on Radio 4.
His previous work for Radio 4 includes the series The Violence Files, Asia Gold and Global Shakeout. Asia Gold won the Sony Gold for current affairs in 1997.
In 1997 he presented Absolute Truth, a landmark four-part series for BBC Two on the modern Catholic Church, and wrote a book to accompany the series.
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 he has written and presented several foreign affairs series for Radio 4 and the BBC World Service, including Diplomatic Jigsaw - about the way the world went to war in Afghanistan - and United Nations Or Not, which examined the impact of the Iraq war and the war on terror on the UN.
In 2001 he won the Amnesty International Award for Best Television Documentary for Israel Accused.
Edward has also presented three series on important religious figures for Radio 4: In The Footsteps Of St Paul, In The Footsteps Of Moses and In The Footsteps Of Mohammed.
He has written books on St Paul, Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Church, and he is currently working on It's A PC World.
