Alex Hannaford

Investigative Journalist, TV Presenter, Writer

Alex has worked as a journalist for almost 20 years and has recently diversified into television presenting.

Born in London in 1974, he spent his early childhood in Nigeria. He cut his teeth in print journalism on the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong and the Lymington Times in England. He worked as a feature writer and commissioning editor on the London Evening Standard before going freelance in 2003.

Alex has taught journalism at Kingston University in the UK and authored a biography (Last of the Rock Romantics) for Ebury Press, part of the Random House group. He has written about the death penalty, crime, harsh sentencing, religion, culture and human rights issues forThe Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph magazines, The Guardian, GQ, Esquire, The Atlantic, The Nation, and the Texas Observer. 

He specialises in stories that are challenging and tough to tell. He has covered mass incarceration, the death penalty, crime, child abuse, natural disasters, and gun violence. His strengths include telling those stories in a clear and compassionate way.

Clippings

The Promised Land, The Sunday Times magazine

Inside Guantanamo

The Alcatraz of the Rockies, The Sunday Times magazine

Does It Matter How A Condemned Man Dies?GQ magazine

A New Prophet in Waco,The Sunday Times magazine 

The 9/11 Revenge Killer & an Extraordinary Lesson in Forgiveness, The Telegraph

A Man Was Murdered Here, Texas Observer

An Audience With Koko, The Talking Gorilla, The Telegraph

Reporting and Writing Awards

In 2007 Alex was a finalist for a Diageo Africa Reporting award.  In 2012 he was a recipient of the prestigious Ochberg Fellowship at the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, Columbia University, New York. In 2015 he received the annual media award from the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty– for a topic he has covered for more than a decade.

Alex is also the founder of Deadliners, a club for journalists in Austin, Texas. A dual British-U.S. citizen, he calls Austin, Texas, home.