Decca Aitkenhead

Jessica "Decca" Aitkenhead (born 1971) is an English journalist, writer and broadcaster.

Early life and education Aitkenhead's family lived in Wiltshire when she was born; she has three older brothers. Her father was a teacher in Bristol before becoming a builder after the family moved to the country. Her mother was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer and died when Aitkenhead was nine. Many years later, Aitkenhead discovered that her mother had killed herself. After moving to London, she completed a Diploma in Newspaper Journalism at City, University of London in 1995 before beginning her career in the national press.

Career Aitkenhead wrote for The Independent from 1995 before joining The Guardian in 1997, but left the paper in 1999 to write her first book.

Her book The Promised Land: Travels in search of the perfect E was published in 2002. Ian Penman in his Guardian review thought the work "tentative" while Geraldine Bedell in The Observer described it as an "intelligent and absorbing book". During a period as a freelance, she wrote for the Mail on Sunday, London Evening Standard, and The Sunday Telegraph, before rejoining The Guardian in 2004. She is also a contributor to radio and television programmes.

Personal life In May 2014, Aitkenhead's partner, Kids Company charity worker Tony Wilkinson, drowned in Jamaica while attempting to rescue one of the couple's two sons, who survived. The couple had been together for a decade. Aitkenhead has written about their relationship and the process of mourning in her memoir All at Sea. Just over a year after Wilkinson died, Aitkenhead discovered she was suffering from an aggressive form of breast cancer with a genetic link. After medical treatment, including chemotherapy, her cancer is in remission.

Awards and honours Aitkenhead was the winner of the BBC's 2020 Russell Prize for best writing for her article How a Jamaican Psychedelic Mushroom Retreat Helped Me Process My Grief, published in The Times.

Publications The Promised Land: Travels in search of the perfect E (2002) All at Sea (2016)