Colin Hughes was a journalist and editor on The Times, The Independent and The Guardian, before running Collins Learning (HarperCollins), and then AQA, the exam board. He chaired the University of Middlesex, the University of Staffordshire and then the board of Ordnance Survey. He is a trustee of The Rialto poetry magazine, co-author of Labour Rebuilt: The New Model Party (Fourth Estate 1990) and editor of What Went Wrong, Gordon Brown? (The Guardian 2010). Having lived most of his adult life in north London, he now runs, sails, walks and watches birds around his home on the north Suffolk coast.