Hugh Miles

1995-96

After d’Overbroeck’s, contrary to what my English teacher Alasdair MacPherson suggested I do, I went up to Pembroke College in Oxford to study Arabic. He said I should be reading English instead, but having grown up in Arabic countries (my dad was a diplomat), I thought I knew better. It did not work out and at the end of my first year I was sent down for failing my ‘prelims’ or first year exams.

Having started studying Arabic, I decided it would be a good idea to try and consolidate what I had learnt, so I went to live in Yemen for 6 months. Afterwards I returned to the UK where I found myself working at a soulless job in a London consultancy company, helping British companies do business in the Middle East. It did not take me long to realise I would be happier back at university, so I decided to give it another try – this time reading English Literature.

I got a place at Trinity College Dublin, where I had my first taste of journalism, working as the office boy for the Irish News of the World. The editor there was patient and kind, and with his help I gradually moved from editing the letters page to writing features about murders and student sex. My work there helped me win ‘The Times / Sky News Young Journalist of the Year 2000’ competition, which later proved invaluable in getting my journalism career started.

In my 3rd year at Dublin, I decided I wanted to work in the US during my summer holidays, so I applied for about fifty internships in all kinds of media companies, ranging from Dreamworks to Playboy Chicago. I got three offers – and wound up working as an intern for three months in Beverly Hills, California, at Lighthouse Productions, an independent production company headed by the Oscar-winning Producer, Michael Phillips (The Sting, Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, Taxi Driver). It was a great experience, in which I learnt all about life in America, plus all the ins and outs of Hollywood. Mr. Phillips wanted me to stay, but I had a final year at university ahead of me, so with a heavy heart, I returned to Dublin.

The day I graduated, with a respectable 2:1 in English Literature, I returned to the US to resume working for Lighthouse Productions. This time I was no longer the intern, but the Development Director, working mainly with scripts and scriptwriters, in what the movie industry calls ‘pre-production’. I spent the next two years living in Los Angeles, until my visa finally expired, when I decided I had had enough of Hollywood, for now at least. So I returned to the UK to try and become a full time writer.

The first year back was difficult, working freelance in fits and spurts for a variety of newspapers and magazines. Then in March 2003, during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, I got a freelance job at Sky News, working nights. My job was monitoring all the rival news channels - CNN, BBC, Fox News plus foreign channels – to check how they were covering the war. Since I spoke Arabic I found myself assigned to watching the Arab channels – Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya and Abu Dhabi TV.

As a freelancer, I took the opportunity to write about the differences between watching the war on the BBC and watching the war on Al Jazeera, in an article later published in the London Review of Books. This turned out to be my big break – the article generated a flurry of publicity, since Al Jazeera was rapidly becoming a household name at this time - and it led to a book deal with Time Warner Books. In January 2005 ‘Al Jazeera – How Arab TV News Challenged the World’ was published in the UK. It was published in the USA the following March, and is currently being translated into half a dozen languages for publication all over the world, including French, Chinese, German, Japanese and Dutch. Following the book’s success, I have found myself the leading expert on Al Jazeera and have travelled the world addressing audiences ranging from the Pentagon and the UK Government, to the European Broadcasting Union and the BBC. This year I was proud to be invited to make the keynote speech at the Swedish National Journalism Awards in Stockholm.

I now live in Cairo, where I recently married an Egyptian doctor named Dina. I still work as a freelance journalist, for The Daily Telegraph, the BBC, The Sun, The Daily Mail, The Daily Mirror, the Guardian plus American and Canadian newspapers. I also work as a media consultant specialising in the Arab media, and recently completed a major assessment of the North African media for the UN. I have also just started work on another book, also commissioned by Time Warner, this time about Egyptian women.

Besides Alasdair, who was without doubt the most inspirational teacher I ever had, my fond memories of d’Overbroeck’s include studying French with Malcolm van Biervliet, who did much to wet my appetite for languages, and Jaimie Tarrell who taught me Biology. My only regret was that I did not come to d’Overbroeck’s sooner. Coming from a public school, where I had a miserable experience at the hands of my unjust and dictatorial housemaster, d’Overbroeck’s was exactly what I needed - somewhere I could lead the kind of life I wanted, and somewhere I would be treated like an adult.