ronwen Maddox is the new Director of the Institute for Government, the leading think tank working to improve government, in making better decisions and implementing them. She will start formally in September 2016, although because of the tumultuous events following Britain’s vote on June 24th to leave the European Union, she has begun commenting from the Institute and steering its programme of work.
For the previous five and a half years, she was editor and chief executive of Prospect Magazine, the UK’s leading current affairs and culture monthly title, which has a rapidly-growing circulation of more than 32,000. She was appointed in November 2010 with a mission to build on Prospect‘s reputation for intellectual rigour and originality. In May she held a high profile interview with Tony Blair, the subject of the cover story of her final issue. Her last editorial is here, and her arguments on the Brexit debate before the vote here.
Before joining Prospect, Bronwen was the Chief Foreign Commentator and Foreign Editor of the Times, writing a column on foreign affairs four days a week for nine years, and running its foreign news coverage and its network of 50 foreign correspondents; she joined the newspaper in 1996 as its US Editor and Washington Bureau Chief. She was previously at the Financial Times, where she led its award-winning investigation into Robert Maxwell, was a specialist correspondent on energy and the environment, and an editorial writer on microeconomics and corporate regulation.
She is the author of In Defence of America, a book arguing the case for supporting the US after the Iraq war; published in the UK and US in 2008.
She joined journalism from the City, where she was a Director of Kleinwort Benson Securities, the broking house, and led its highly-rated team of investment analysts for the media sector. She was previously at Charterhouse Venture Capital, where she helped raise the money for The Independent newspaper.
She is a Governor of the Ditchley Foundation, and a Member of the Council (a Trustee) of Chatham House; she was a Trustee of the Imperial War Museum from 2010 to 2014. She has a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from St John’s College, Oxford, and lives in London.
