As part of the Writing Wrongs Project, Ed Vulliamy and Ian Cobain (award winning investigative journalists from the Guardian) and Andrew Williams (Warwick Centre for Human Rights in Practice) will be discussing the topic of ‘Angry Writing’. The discussion will be chaired by Maureen Freely from the Writing Programme. There will be readings from recent ‘angry’ works to provoke debate. The event will take place on Tuesday 4th December, 5pm in the ACCR, Warwick Arts Centre with a drinks reception being held afterwards in the ACCR foyer.

Ed Vulliamy is author of The War is Dead, Long Live the War: Bosnia the Reckoning which examines the legacy of the Bosnian War 20 years after its outbreak. He is a journalist and writes for the Guardian and Observer. He has been shortlisted for an Amnesty International Media Award for his reporting on Mexico. For his work in Bosnia, Italy, the US and Iraq he has won a James Cameron Award and an Amnesty International Media Award and has been named International Reporter of the Year (twice) and runner-up at the Foreign Press Association Awards. In 1996 he became the first journalist to ever testify at an international crimes court, at the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia. A believer in the duty of journalists to testify in matters of humanitarian law, he has since lectured extensively on the subject.

Ian Cobain is author of Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture in which the UK’s persistent use of torture since 1945 is exposed. He was born in Liverpool in 1960. He has been a journalist since the early 1980s and is currently an investigative reporter with the Guardian. His inquiries into the UK’s involvement in torture since 9/11 have won a number of major awards, including the Martha Gellhorn Prize and the Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism. He has also won several Amnesty International media awards. Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture is his first book.

Andrew Williams is author of A Very British Killing which investigates the murder of Baha Mousa in Iraq and the British institutional indifference that followed. He is a professor of law in Warwick University. His non-fiction book, A Very British Killing tells the inside story of the death of Baha Mousa, a hotel receptionist in Basra, arrested and tortured by a British Army unit in 2003. It examines the institutional brutality, the bureaucratic apathy, the flawed military police inquiry and the farcical court martial that attempted to hold people criminally responsible. Even though a full public inquiry reported its findings into the crimes in September 2011, its mandate restricted what it could say. The full story shows how this was not simply about a few bad men or ‘rotten apples’. It shines a light on all those involved in the crime and its investigation, from the lowest squaddie to the elite of the army and politicians in Cabinet.

For further information please contact: j.c.wilson@warwick.ac.uk