Brian Viner

Brian grew up in Southport, a town in Lancashire before the 1974 boundary changes rudely shifted it into Merseyside. Later, he read Modern History at St Andrews University, and spent a further year studying at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1986, after an eventful internship at CNN in Atlanta, he returned to the UK determined to become a journalist.

But how? In those days there was a hefty tome called Who’s Who which, remarkable as it now seems, listed the home addresses of famous people. Brian wrote to 50 of them, explaining that he was trying to get going as a journalist, so would they give him an interview, which perhaps he might get published? Only nine replied, only four said yes, and only two write-ups made it into print. But a cuttings portfolio had begun.

It was a valuable early lesson in tenacity. Soon afterwards, Brian landed a job at the Hampstead & Highgate Express, where his boss, or at least the worldly deputy news editor to his clueless novice reporter, was a certain Jane Sanderson (his Writers Inc partner and wife since 1993). 

Now, Brian is one of the most experienced and prolific interviewers in the industry, having sat down with hundreds of celebrated figures not just in sport but also broadcasting and show business.

Zinedine Zidane, Shane Warne, Jonah Lomu, George Foreman, Bernie Ecclestone, Arnold Palmer, Lester Piggott and Martina Navratilova are among the many legendary sporting figures subject to The Brian Viner Interview in The Independent. In other realms, he grilled Prince Philip, Helen Mirren, John Cleese, Barry Humphries, Cliff Richard, Victoria Wood, Tony Bennett, Christopher Lee and Sting, turned the tables several times on Michael Parkinson, and went on the road with Status Quo.

As a film critic he sees four or five new movies every week, on average. He has also been a TV critic and an obituarist, a travel writer and a restaurant reviewer, and his colour-writing for the features desks of national newspapers has taken him around the world, from Cairo to California, from Andalusia to Australia. He is a former winner of a prestigious What the Papers Say award for excellence in journalism. 

It was never actually the plan to write books. But in 2002, Jane, Brian and their children left busy north London to live in bucolic north Herefordshire. Soon afterwards, he started writing a humorous column in The Independent about their new rural life. And from that column came a book of the same title, Tales of the Country, later reworked for the stage. 

Chronicling the family’s first 12 months in the sticks, the premise was that it is much more of a culture shock to relocate from London to the English countryside than from London to New York, say, or Paris, or Berlin.

Most of Brian’s subsequent books have been at least partly autobiographical (his 2011 study of the British on holiday – Cream Teas, Traffic Jams and Sunburn – was anointed Travel Book of the Year) but it all began with the relocation to the country.

It was a happy move personally, too, because more than 23 years later Brian and Jane are still in the same Herefordshire house. It is there that they have started hosting their Writers Inc retreats for aspiring or novice writers, or indeed established writers who need help, or just a spark to re-light their fire.

While Jane focuses on the skills that helped her become an acclaimed novelist, whose gorgeous love story Mix Tape was triumphantly adapted for television in the summer of 2025, Brian tells stories from his long career and shares some of the techniques required to thrive as a writer of non-fiction. He explains how to research and then structure a story, and how to parlay life’s experiences into a compelling book. He talks about his own inspirations, and reflects on the lessons he has learnt over decades, not least the importance of looking and listening, such a key part of the creative process.

The joy of writing as a job is that the creative impulse never dwindles. It’s possible not just to keep going but to keep getting better. Now in his early sixties, and busier than ever with various projects (including a feature-film screenplay and a book about the cinema), Brian is eager, alongside Jane, to pass on some of his expertise. Their aim is to foster at their Docklow retreats a sense of excitement at the possibilities for all of us who love to write; a thrilling sense of what, with some considered guidance, we can all achieve and what the next chapter might hold.

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