Rod Liddle

Roderick E. L. Liddle (born 1 April 1960) is an English journalist.

He is an associate editor of The Spectator, and former editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he is the author of Too Beautiful for You (2003), Love Will Destroy Everything (2007), the co-author of The Best of Liddle Britain (2007), and the author of the semi-autobiographical Selfish Whining Monkeys (2014). He has presented several television programmes, including The New Fundamentalists, The Trouble with Atheism, and Immigration Is A Time Bomb.

Liddle began his career at the South Wales Echo, then worked for the Labour Party, and later joined the BBC. He became editor of Today in 1998, resigning in 2002 after his employers objected to one of his articles in The Guardian. He has also written for The Sunday Times and The Sun among other publications.

His comments have repeatedly caused controversy, and his acrimonious divorce in 2004 from Rachel Royce received much attention from the media. He was accused of racism for making remarks about the African-Caribbean community and for the content of his posts to an online forum. A November 2011 article by Liddle in The Spectator about the trial of two men involved in the murder of Stephen Lawrence led to the magazine being prosecuted for breaching reporting restrictions. A court hearing was held in June 2012, in which The Spectator pleaded guilty to contempt of court and accepted a fine of £5,000 plus costs.