Jake Wallis Simons is an award-winning British multimedia journalist and novelist. As Associate Global Editor for the Daily Mail Online, he covers mainly foreign stories. In addition, he is a commentator for Sky News and a broadcaster for BBC Radio 4 and the World Service.
He has written four novels, including the bestselling The English German Girl, which tells the story of the Kindertransport. It won the Fiction Uncovered prize and received widespread critical praise, with the late Sir Martin Gilbert calling it ‘a powerful evocation of a bygone era’.
As a journalist, Jake has reported from all over Europe, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. He is known for his multimedia approach, combining writing for digital and print with Facebook Live, photography and appearances on television and radio.
Jake has been on the ground for major breaking news stories such as the Bataclan attack in Paris, the fall of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, the collapse of Venezuela and the terror attacks in Sri Lanka. He’s written on the war in Syria, the global Sunni-Shia power struggle, the European migration crisis and the rise of the far-Right in Scandinavia. He has also conducted many foreign investigations, such as tracking down Adolph Eichmann’s Nazi sons in Argentina and exposing the ‘essay factories’ of Nairobi.
Jake has presented numerous radio documentaries for the BBC on a variety of subjects, including private detectives and Interpol, as well as television for BBC Breakfast. In addition, he appears regularly on for BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent.
Jake has also broken a number of political stories. In 2015, he was the first journalist to expose Jeremy Corbyn’s links to various extremists and conspiracy theorists, including Holocaust denier Paul Eisen. Among other key disclosures, in August 2018 he revealed Mr Cornyn’s comments that British Zionists ‘don’t understand English irony’, which dominated national headlines.
Formerly, Jake was a Features Writer at the Sunday Telegraph, where he wrote Meet the Settlers, a longform multimedia story that won and was shortlisted for a range of awards, including the British Press Award.
As a freelance writer, he has worked for the Times and Sunday Times, the Independent, the Guardian and others as well as international outlets including CNN, POLITICO, Newsweek and La Repubblica.
Jake holds a First in English from St Peter’s College, Oxford, and a PhD in Creative Writing from UEA, and has lectured at Oxford and elsewhere. He is a judge for the Reuters News Fixer Award, and a Visiting Fellow at Bournemouth University.