Last updated September 2008
Category: News
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Frank Gardner is the UK's first full-time Security Correspondent, reporting and analysing for BBC TV, radio and online on issues of both domestic and international security.
He is a fluent Arabist with a degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies from Exeter University, and has lived and worked in several Middle Eastern countries.
He spent nine years as an investment banker in New York, London and Bahrain before switching to journalism in 1995 and later becoming the BBC's Middle East Correspondent based in Cairo.
Frank has reported extensively on terrorism and security from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf as well as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Guantanamo Bay and the Horn of Africa.
In 2004 he was shot six times in an opportunistic attack by al-Qaeda gunmen while filming in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. His cameraman was killed but Frank survived with major injuries, returning to his BBC job after 14 operations.
In 2005 he was awarded the OBE by HM The Queen for services to journalism.
He has been awarded Honorary Doctorates of Laws by Nottingham, Staffordshire and Exeter universities, he was the winner of Spain's El Mundo Prize for International Journalism in 2006 and twice shortlisted for the Royal Television Society news journalism prize.
Frank is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and his bestselling book Blood And Sand, describing his 25 years of Middle Eastern experiences, was published in 2006.
He has given evidence to various UK Parliamentary Select Committees on the conduct of the 'War on Terrorism'.
