andrew lownie literary agency

Brian Groom Biography

Brian Groom

Brian Groom is a journalist and one of the foremost experts on British regional and national affairs. His career was spent mainly at the Financial Times, where he did many of the top writing and editing jobs. He is also a former editor of Scotland on Sunday, which he launched as deputy editor and which won many awards. Originally from Stretford, Lancashire (now part of Greater Manchester), he returned to live in the north – in Saddleworth, south Pennines – in 2015.

Brian went to Manchester Grammar School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he got a first-class BA in English Language and Literature. He has a lifelong interest in history and was a regular reader of History Today by age 12.

He started work as sports editor and trainee journalist at the Goole Times, east Yorkshire, where he won the Pfizer Award for UK’s best performance as a trainee journalist.

He moved quickly to the Financial Times where did a variety of jobs, including four years as a labour reporter, covering the miners’ strike among other stories. He became UK news editor.

In 1988 he launched Scotland on Sunday, Scotsman Publications’ Sunday paper, as deputy editor and later became editor. It was voted UK Newspaper of the Year (Newspaper Industry Awards 1994) and UK Sunday Newspaper of the Year (Newspaper Industry Awards 1997).

He returned to the FT in 1997 and did several senior jobs, including covering regional affairs and running the regional reporting team. He was an assistant editor and has been political editor, Europe edition editor, comment and analysis editor and UK business and employment editor.

Author News

  • Brian Groom two-book deal with Harper North 19 Sep 2022

    HarperNorth have bought World English rights to the next two books by Brian Groom, author of the bestselling Northerners: A History, from the Ice Age to the Present Day.

    The first book, Mancunians, due to be published in May 2024, will tell the story of the people who built the “shock city” of the Industrial Revolution and the impact they have had on the world. Like Northerners, it will combine historical narrative with social and cultural themes and colourful portraits of personalities, famous or not, involved in the story. It will examine Manchester’s past and present and the role it can play in Britain’s future.

    A second book, with the working title These Isles, is due to be published in May 2025. It will tell the story of the relationship between the peoples of England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and other parts of the British and Irish isles.

    Both books will draw on the Stretford-born author’s more than four decades as a journalist specialising largely in the archipelago’s regions and nations. Northerners, which has been a Times number three bestseller in hardback non-fiction, is also published by HarperNorth.

  • History of North to Collins 24 Nov 2020

    Harper North have bought World English rights in Brian Groom’s Northerners: A History. From the Ice Ages to the 21st Century

Author's Books