Christina Patterson is a writer, broadcaster and columnist. She writes about current affairs, society, culture, travel, books and the arts. She has interviewed writers and artists ranging from Martin Amis and Eddie Izzard to Werner Herzog and did the first interview with Gordon Brown after he left office. After 10 years on the staff of the Independent, she is now freelance, writing mostly for the The Sunday Times and the Guardian, and on her blog, Independent Thinking.

After terrible experiences of nursing, she has tried to do what she can to make things better. She did a special report on nursing in the Independent, which was shortlisted for this year’s Orwell prize, and has made programmes about it for Radio 4, and presented a film about it for The One Show. A regular commentator on radio and TV news and cultural programmes, she has written for most of the national broadsheets, as well as for the Spectator, the New Statesman, the TLS, the Literary Review, High Life and the Huffington Post. She has contributed to books on literature, poetry and healthcare and is currently finishing a relatively cheerful memoir about cancer, madness and God.