Afshin Rattansi

Afshin Rattansi has for more than two decades worked in flagship broadcast and print media around the world. In the UK, he has worked at The Guardian, the New Statesman, for every regional and national outlet of the BBC and a host of award-winning Channel 4 production companies. In 1999, he helped to launch the developing world's first global financial news and current affairs channel.

He has reported on events across Africa and Latin America as well as the Middle East and Europe for fifteen years, covering the fall of the Berlin Wall, the resignation of Margaret Thatcher and working on the first UK primetime documentary to analyse human rights abuses by the then US and British-backed regime of Saddam Hussein.

Before working for the BBC's Business and Economics Units, he analysed geopolitical financial and environmental risk for Lloyd's of London after world markets crashed. Portfolio allocation was of the order of 1 bn.

Returning from the Middle East in 2002, he went on to produce for the BBC's top-rated radio show, the Today programme, on Radio 4. The programme was at the centre of the furore over claims that the Iraqi government possessed weapons of mass destruction. He left the programme amidst the events that led to the widely ridiculed Hutton Inquiry into the death of government scientist and Today programme source, David Kelly.

He was one of the first english-language employees of Al Jazeera and worked at the Arab satellite station's flagship programme, 'Top Secret' which uncovered the Al Qaida plot to attack Washington and New York in 2001.

He has since worked for the UK's top-rated breakfast television programme GMTV as well as CNN Internationa

He went on to edit news for Bloomberg Television.

He was based in Tehran, Iran - working at Press TV in 2008.

Afshin Rattansi has written six novels that have been represented by A. P. Watt and Curtis Brown Literary Agencies. His quartet, "The Dream of the Decade - The London Novels" is published by Booksurge in the United States of America.

He is also a Fellow of the Asian Guild.