Alex Renton is the only former war correspondent to have become a food columnist – an exquisite lamb shawarma consumed on the Jordan-Iraq border in March 2003 helped the process. His journalism on development. global poverty (and food) have won him eight awards or commendations in the last six years. Born in Canada, educated in England, he worked as a writer and editor on the Independent and the London Evening Standard before leaving journalism to work for Oxfam in East Asia.

Alex writes a weekly column for The Times and also writes for the Observer and Prospect.

He now lives in Scotland, owns a remote pig and is author of Planet Carnivore: how cheap meat costs the earth.