Parry, Tom – Top UK journalist cut his teeth in Grantham

Tom Parry (b1974)

Tom Parry is the Daily Mirror’s Special Correspondent. He was named Feature Writer of the Year at the British Press Awards 2014. Previously, Tom has been shortlisted four times in that category, three times as Environment Journalist of the Year. and once for Interviewer of the Year.

Among his key achievements are agenda-setting dispatches from Somalia during the Horn of Africa drought; an investigation into coltan mining and wildlife trafficking in D.R. Congo; reports from Belarus and Ukraine on the Chernobyl radiation leak anniversary and investigations into UK homelessness.

Tom was born in Birmingham although his academic start was disappointing. He flunked his A Levels, so to get over this failure, the 18-year-old went to Australia for a spell. There he had various jobs from grape-picking and building a fishpond in Queensland, to working as a canvasser for the Natural Law Party.

He returned to the UK and gained degrees in English Literature and Philosophy in 1996 at Sheffield University.

He took another year out, this time trying, unsuccessfully, to establish himself as a drummer in a rock band.

So instead he decided to try his hand at journalism

With his Swiss-born wife Katia, he moved to Sleaford and got a job as trainee reporter at the Grantham Journal for 13 months between Jan 1998 and Jan 1999.

It was there he discovered this was the career for him and was soon making his way to Fleet Street, eventually getting a staff job with the Daily Mirror.

But first he joined a news agency before going freelance with shifts at The Independent, The Daily Express and The Daily Mirror as well as providing stories for The Daily Mail and The Times.

His travel features were published in Traveller, France, French Life, Wanderlust and Global magazines.

He joined the Daily Mirror sending dispatches from Japan after the tsunami and Fukushima radioactive leak; special reports on North Korean spy abductions, unprecedented floods in Pakistan, flower farming in Kenya, UK young offenders’ prisons and the Greek financial crisis; exclusive investigation uncovering new evidence in the disappearance of Ben Needham and a three-part series on children in peril in Britain.

His foreign reporting covered most notably, Niger, Benin, Pakistan, Ghana, Sri Lanka and Haiti; investigation into links between Lord Ashcroft’s political donations and the Belize Bank.

In 2006 he Wrote Thumbs Up Australia, above his adventures in the outback. His  second book, The Perfect Crime, the first in-depth account of the mysterious murders of a British family in the French Alps was published in 2015.

In 2007 he was one of two Daily Mirror journalists were arrested after trying to plant a fake bomb on a London Underground train at Stonebridge Park depot, to demonstrate how poor security was

They were caught carrying their fake bomb by railway staff who called the British Transport Police.

In January that year he also planted a fake bomb on an unguarded train at Didcot Parkway station, sparking an urgent review of security arrangements for MoD trains.

The train, parked in sidings at the station, was reportedly packed with army explosives when Parry, accompanied by a photographer, planted the fake device after walking off a public platform and crossing a high-speed train line to enter a secure yard. It was said to have been delivering ordnance intended for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The previous year the Mirror ran a similar exposé by Parry involving trains carrying nuclear waste to Sellafield.

In 2012 he was nominated for an award for piece on child victims of the Japan tsunami one year on, Britain’s toughest young offenders prison and Britain’s children in crisis.

In 2013 he was shortlisted for articles on abducted child soldiers returning home in Uganda, North Korea’s kidnap of Japanese citizens to train spies and a scheme to prevent London teenagers joining gangs.

The judges at the UK Press Awards presentation in March 2015 described his submissions as “brave, excellent reporting that was wonderfully written”. Prior to winning the accolade of Feature Writer of the Year at this ceremony he had been shortlisted in the same category for the two previous years.

The shortlisted articles were the first dispatches from a British journalist in Liberia as the Ebola outbreak spread, a series on the illegal ivory trade from Kenya including an interview with a convicted elephant poacher, and colour pieces from Normandy for the 70th anniversary of D-Day.