Richard Norton-Taylor

Richard Seymour Norton-Taylor (born 6 June 1944) is a British editor, journalist, and playwright. He wrote for The Guardian on defence and security matters from 1975 to 2016, and was the newspaper's security editor. He now works for the investigative journalism site Declassified UK.

Early life and education He was born to Lt. Seymour Norton-Taylor, R.A., and Gweneth Joan Powell (died 9 January 1978).

Norton-Taylor was educated at The King's School in Canterbury, Kent, going on to study at Hertford College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford, and the College of Europe in Bruges. Another was Justifying War: Scenes from the Hutton Inquiry (2003), both of which premiered at the Tricycle Theatre.

Norton-Taylor left The Guardian in July 2016 and currently writes for Declassified UK.

Awards In 1986 Norton-Taylor won the Freedom of Information Campaign award. That same year he was prevented initially by a court injunction from reporting the contents of Spycatcher (1987), the memoirs of Peter Wright, a former MI5 agent. The government's injunction was dismissed in the High Court by Lord Justice Scott.

Norton-Taylor was one of the few journalists to cover the Scott Inquiry from start to finish. His play, Half the Picture, based on the inquiry, received a 1994 Time Out Drama, Comedy and Dance award for its "brave initiative".

In 2010, with fellow Guardian journalist Ian Cobain, he was awarded a Human Rights Campaign of the Year Award from Liberty for their "investigation into Britain's complicity in the use of torture" by the United States against detainees at their facility at Guantanamo Bay and at black sites.

Personal life In 1967, he married Anna C Rendle. He has two children and five grandchildren. His son Hugo is a judge of the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber).

Norton-Taylor is a Member of Council of the Royal United Services Institute and a trustee of the Civil Liberties Trust and the London Action Trust.