Hugh McIlvanney
Picture courtesy of The Sunday Times
Hugh McIlvanney OBE is widely regarded as the outstanding sportswriter of his generation. Winner of the two main British sports journalist of the year awards a combined total of a dozen times, he is the only sports specialist to have been voted Journalist of the Year and the first foreign writer to be honoured by the Boxing Writers Association of America.
In 2005 he was among the forty journalists inducted at the founding of the British Newspaper Hall of Fame.
Born in Kilmarnock, Hugh began his career as a news reporter with the Kilmarnock Standard, Daily Express and the Scotsman. In 1962 he joined the Observer in London, soon becoming the newspaper's chief sports correspondent, a post he held, punctuated by a spell writing international news and features for the Daily Express, until 1993, when he moved to the The Sunday Times as chief sportswriter. Having stepped down in 2002, he now writes a weekly column for the paper.
Over the years Hugh has contributed regularly to television and radio and has written and presented several television documentaries, including the highly acclaimed The Football Men. He has published collections of his work on boxing, football and horse racing and co-wrote Managing My Life, Sir Alex Ferguson's bestselling autobiography. He also made a substantial contribution to the recently-published, Manchester United Opus. A long-standing member of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year judging panel, he is also chairman of the selection panel for the Scottish Football Hall of Fame, inaugurated in 2004. Hugh is also a noted, and much sought-after, after-dinner speaker.
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