Emily Maitlis: The Fearless Voice Who Redefined British Journalism
There are journalists who report the news, and then there are journalists who become part of it. Emily Maitlis firmly belongs in the second camp. Whether she’s cornering a prince about his relationship with a convicted sex offender, hosting one of the UK’s most listened-to podcasts, or sparking national debates about media independence, Maitlis has spent decades doing what most journalists only dream of — asking the questions that truly matter and refusing to flinch at the answers.
So, who exactly is Emily Maitlis, where is Emily Maitlis now, and what makes her one of the most compelling figures in modern British media? Let’s take a deep dive.
Biography Emily Maitlis:
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Emily Maitlis |
| Date of Birth | 6 September 1970 |
| Age | 54 years old (as of 2025) |
| Place of Birth | Hamilton, Ontario, Canada |
| Nationality | British-Canadian |
| Hometown | Sheffield, England |
| Religion | Jewish |
| Ethnicity | White British |
| Zodiac Sign | Virgo |
| Height | 5 ft 6 in (168 cm) |
| Eye Color | Brown |
| Hair Color | Dark Brown |
| Father | Professor Peter Maitlis FRS |
| Mother | Language Tutor (name not publicly disclosed) |
| Siblings | Not publicly known |
| Marital Status | Married |
| Husband | Mark Gwynne (Investment Manager) |
| Children | Two sons — Milo & Max |
| Education | King Edward VII School, Sheffield |
| University | Queens’ College, Cambridge (English); University of Hong Kong (Postgraduate) |
| Languages | English, Spanish, Italian, French, Mandarin |
| Profession | Journalist, Broadcaster, Author, Podcast Host |
| Known For | BBC Newsnight anchor; Prince Andrew interview (2019) |
| Current Role | Co-host of The News Agents podcast (Global/LBC) |
| Years Active | 1992 – Present |
| Former Employer | BBC (left February 2022) |
| Current Employer | Global (LBC/The News Agents); Channel 4 |
| Book | Airhead: The Imperfect Art of Making News (2019) |
| Social Media | Active on X (formerly Twitter) |
| Net Worth | Estimated £3–5 million (not officially confirmed) |
| Hobbies | Running, Collecting Vintage Teacups |
| Notable Award | RTS Scoop of the Year 2020; Broadcast Journalist of the Year 2017 |
| Residence | London, England |
Who Is Emily Maitlis? A Quick Introduction
Emily Maitlis is an award-winning British-Canadian journalist, former BBC Newsnight anchor, bestselling author, and podcast host. Celebrated for her sharp intellect and fearless interviewing style, she has sat across from two sitting US presidents, six UK Prime Ministers, and delivered what many consider the most extraordinary political interview of the 21st century — the Prince Andrew interview of 2019.
GQ Magazine has named her one of the most influential people in Britain, and it’s easy to understand why. Over the course of a career spanning more than three decades, Emily Maitlis has shaped political conversations, challenged power, and consistently raised the bar for what serious journalism looks like.
Emily Maitlis Age, Early Life & Background
How old is Emily Maitlis? She was born on 6 September 1970 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, which makes her 54 years old as of 2025. Though she was born in Canada, Emily Maitlis grew up in Sheffield, England, where her father — Professor Peter Maitlis FRS, Emeritus Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Sheffield — was a prominent academic, and her mother worked as a foreign language tutor.
Emily Maitlis young was every bit the academic high-achiever her upbringing might suggest. She attended King Edward VII School in Sheffield before earning a place at Queens’ College, Cambridge, where she studied English. She is also notably multilingual, speaking Spanish, Italian, French, and some Mandarin — a skill set that would prove invaluable as her journalism career took her around the globe.
Early Career: Hong Kong, Adventure & Briefly Being Jailed
The story of Emily Maitlis in the 90s reads more like a novel than a career biography. In 1992, fresh from Cambridge, she moved to Hong Kong, initially working as a language tutor before enrolling in a postgraduate degree at the University of Hong Kong.
It wasn’t long before the world of broadcasting called. She began working at Radio Television Hong Kong and went on to produce The Pearl Report for Television Broadcast. Then came a role with NBC Asia that took her journalism into genuinely dangerous territory — traveling to the Philippines and Cambodia to make documentaries, during which she was briefly jailed while covering the Khmer Rouge.
Emily Maitlis in the 90s also covered two landmark historical moments: the Asian Financial Crisis and the historic 1997 handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China. These formative experiences gave her a global outlook and a resilience that would define her entire career.
Rise at the BBC: From Correspondent to Lead Anchor
After returning to the UK, Emily Maitlis joined Sky News as a business correspondent before moving to BBC London News in 2001. Her rise through the BBC was steady and impressive. She became a regular presenter on the BBC News Channel across a decade from 2006 to 2016, working alongside respected colleagues such as Ben Brown and Jon Sopel. She also presented BBC Breakfast and the lighter news programme STORYFix.
Her most significant role, however, came with Newsnight. She joined as a relief presenter in 2006, and by 2018 — following Evan Davis’s departure — she became the programme’s lead anchor. By 2019, she was among the highest-paid BBC news and current affairs staff, a reflection of just how central she had become to the corporation’s flagship journalism output.
Emily Maitlis & the Prince Andrew Interview: A Historic Moment
No discussion of Emily Maitlis would be complete without talking about the Emily Maitlis Prince Andrew interview — perhaps the most talked-about political interview in modern British broadcasting history.
In November 2019, Prince Andrew sat down with Emily Maitlis for a Newsnight special to address his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender. What followed was a masterclass in forensic, unflinching journalism. The prince’s responses — including his now-infamous claim that he could not sweat — were widely ridiculed, and the fallout was enormous. Prince Andrew subsequently stepped back from royal duties.
The interview between Prince Andrew and Emily Maitlis is widely regarded as one of the most significant scoops in the history of British television journalism, earning her RTS Interview of the Year and Scoop of the Year in 2020. It was so consequential that it was later dramatised in the 2024 Amazon Prime series A Very Royal Scandal, with Ruth Wilson portraying Emily Maitlis and Michael Sheen playing Prince Andrew — a production that Emily herself executive produced.
Notable Interviews: A Career Built on Big Conversations
The Emily Maitlis and Prince Andrew interview may be her most famous, but it is far from the only landmark moment in her career. She has interviewed two sitting US presidents — Donald Trump and Bill Clinton — as well as six UK Prime Ministers. Her interviewees have also included Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, French politician Marine Le Pen, and even sprinting legend Usain Bolt.
She covered 18 months of US presidential primaries and campaigns and presented BBC election coverage in 2012 alongside David Dimbleby. Her work with Peter Mandelson — Emily Maitlis and Peter Mandelson have engaged in several notable on-air exchanges — further cemented her reputation as a tenacious political interviewer willing to press even the most seasoned political operators.
Controversies: Impartiality, Independence & the BBC
No career as bold as Emily Maitlis’s comes without controversy. In February 2021, she was criticised for sharing a tweet by Piers Morgan that condemned the government, raising questions about BBC impartiality guidelines. The BBC issued a swift apology — one that Maitlis herself later took issue with publicly.
At the 2022 MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival, she delivered one of the most candid and searching critiques of the BBC’s approach to editorial independence, questioning why the corporation had apologised so quickly and whether the institutional culture around impartiality was serving journalism — or stifling it. Her departure from the BBC was widely seen as a direct consequence of the growing tension between her outspoken nature and the corporation’s desire for strict neutrality.
What Is Emily Maitlis Doing Now? New Ventures After the BBC
On 22 February 2022, Emily Maitlis announced her resignation from the BBC, having signed with Global, the parent company of LBC. For those asking what is Emily Maitlis doing now, the answer is: more than ever.
She now co-hosts The News Agents, a hugely popular daily news podcast on Global, alongside former BBC colleagues Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall. The show has become a cultural phenomenon in British media — sharp, irreverent, and deeply informed — winning two Golds at the British Podcast Awards for Best News & Current Affairs Podcast. In 2025, the team took The News Agents on a live tour that kicked off at the iconic Royal Albert Hall.
On television, she fronted Channel 4’s 2024 General Election special, which was widely praised as the most enjoyable election coverage of that cycle. She also anchored Channel 4’s 2024 US election coverage from Washington. Where is Emily Maitlis now? She’s busier, freer, and arguably more influential than at any other point in her career.
Emily Maitlis Podcast: The News Agents
The News Agents has become one of the most important voices in British political media. Available daily, the Emily Maitlis podcast dissects the latest news with wit, depth, and the kind of access that only journalists of Maitlis’s calibre can command. Whether it’s breaking down a budget, probing a political scandal, or offering context behind a major international story, The News Agents consistently delivers.
For fans of Emily Maitlis on Twitter, she remains active on the platform, sharing insights, commentary, and links to the podcast. Her social media presence reflects the same directness that has defined her broadcasting work.
Author & Screen Credits
In April 2019, Emily Maitlis published Airhead: The Imperfect Art of Making News, a memoir and meditation on the chaotic reality behind television journalism. It became a Sunday Times bestseller and offered readers an authentic, witty, and sometimes startling look at what really goes on behind the camera.
Beyond A Very Royal Scandal, she also co-executive produced the Channel 4 documentary Andrew – The Problem Prince in 2023, further cementing her role as a storyteller as well as a journalist. She has contributed writing to The Sunday Times, The Spectator, The Guardian, and The New Statesman.
Awards & Recognition
The accolades Emily Maitlis has accumulated over her career reflect a consistent standard of excellence. She was named Broadcast Journalist of the Year at the 2017 London Press Club Awards, and went on to win RTS Network Presenter of the Year in both 2019 and 2020. In 2020, she also received the German Hanns Joachim Friedrichs Award — one of broadcast journalism’s most prestigious international honours. The Women in Film and TV News and Factual Award followed in 2021, and her podcast has since added two British Podcast Award golds to her collection.
Emily Maitlis Husband, Children & Personal Life
Away from the cameras and microphones, Emily Maitlis is married to Mark Gwynne, an investment manager. The couple has two children together, Milo and Max. Reports have noted that Emily Maitlis’s son attended Eton — a detail that drew some ironic commentary given her incisive coverage of Britain’s class divide and political establishment.
As for Emily Maitlis’s children, both boys appear to have been raised largely out of the public eye, a deliberate choice by a mother who has spent her professional life in the spotlight. The Emily Maitlis wedding to Mark Gwynne was a private affair, consistent with how she has approached her family life throughout her career.
She is also known to be a keen runner and an enthusiast for vintage teacups — two rather contrasting hobbies that somehow perfectly encapsulate the woman herself.
On the subject of Emily Maitlis dog, she has been known to share affectionate mentions of her pet on social media, though details remain charmingly low-key compared to her high-profile professional life.
The Emily Maitlis Stalker Case
One of the more sobering chapters in Emily Maitlis’s life is the stalking she endured for more than six years by a former university acquaintance. The individual, Edward Vines, was eventually sentenced to four months in prison. However, the case did not end there — Vines continued to make contact even after his release, leading to further legal proceedings over subsequent years.
Rather than staying silent, Emily Maitlis has spoken openly about the Emily Maitlis stalker experience, using her platform to raise awareness about the psychological impact of stalking and the inadequacy of the legal protections available to victims. Her willingness to discuss such a painful ordeal publicly is emblematic of the courage she brings to everything she does.
Is Emily Maitlis Ill?
Searches asking “is Emily Maitlis ill” appear to surface periodically online, likely prompted by her occasional absences from the public eye or breaks between projects. There is no confirmed or publicised health issue relating to Emily Maitlis. She remains one of the most active voices in British media, regularly recording The News Agents, appearing on television, writing, and speaking publicly. If anything, her current output suggests she is in excellent professional form.
Legacy & Impact: Why Emily Maitlis Matters
Emily Maitlis has done something rare in modern journalism — she has consistently put truth above comfort, accountability above access, and public interest above institutional loyalty. Her Prince Andrew interview alone would secure her a place in broadcasting history. But taken together, her career represents something larger: proof that journalism, at its best, can change the national conversation.
She is a prominent voice in the ongoing debate about media impartiality, editorial independence, and what journalists owe to the public. In an era of fractured trust in media institutions, her willingness to name the tensions within the BBC and to operate with transparency about her own perspective has won her admiration far beyond the traditional journalism world.
What is Emily Maitlis doing now? She is, by any measure, at the height of her powers — shaping political discourse through her podcast, her television work, and her writing, one question at a time.
Also Read: What Actually Happened During TikTok’s January Infrastructure Crisis
