David Leigh

David Leigh is a British journalist and author, currently Leigh is assistant editor of The Guardian.

Leigh was educated at Nottingham High School and King's College, Cambridge, receiving a research degree from Cambridge in 1968. He was a journalist for the Scotsman, Times, and Guardian, and a Laurence Stern fellow at the Washington Post in 1980. From 1980 he was chief investigative reporter at The Observer.

He has been a prominent investigative journalist since the 1970s, and with his 1988 book The Wilson Plot he did much to increase public interest in alleged attempts by the British security services and others to destabilise Harold Wilson's government in the 1970s. His 1995 TV documentary for World in Action, "Jonathan of Arabia", led after a libel trial to the jailing for perjury of former Conservative defence minister Jonathan Aitken. With colleague Rob Evans, he published a series of corruption exposures in the London Guardian about international arms giant BAE Systems'. After criminal inquiry by the US Department of Justice and other international prosecutors, the company was eventually hit with penalties totalling $529 million //www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/may/17/bae-to-pay-79m-dollar-fine-to-us

In 2006, Leigh became the Anthony Sampson Professor of Reporting in the Journalism department at City University London. In 2007, he was awarded the Paul Foot prize, with his colleague Rob Evans, for the BAE bribery...
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