Iain Dale

His most recent book was co-edited by the former Labour Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, and is a collection of biographical essays of every female MP elected to the House of Commons since 1918 entitled Honourable Ladies. A second volume was published in 2019.

Dale got his break in radio on BBC Radio 5 Live, where he was the regular cover for Andrew Pierce on Sunday Service with Fi Glover and Charlie Whelan.

Iain Dale (born 15 July 1962) is a British broadcaster, author and political commentator, and a former publisher and book retailer.

He was awarded an upper second class honours BA in 1985.

Dale was a research assistant to the Conservative Member of Parliament Patrick Thompson (1985–87), the public affairs manager for the British Ports Federation (1987–89), a financial journalist with Lloyd's List (1989–90) and then the deputy managing director of the Waterfront Partnership and the managing director of the Waterfront Conference Company (1990–96).

He presented a documentary on how the BBC covers general election results, Counting Chickens on the night of the 2001 general election, 7 June 2001.

He has been a blogger since 2002.

It was nominated by The Guardian for the Political Blog of the Year Award in 2005.

Between 2006 and 2013, Dale wrote a weekly diary column for the Eastern Daily Press.

This includes co-authoring, in May 2006, a book with fellow blogger Paul Staines (responsible for the Guido Fawkes website) about alleged instances of sleaze from the Labour government since it took office in 1997.

Dale wrote a fortnightly column for The Daily Telegraph from 2007 to 2009.

He has also written for The Guardian, The Independent, GQ, The Spectator, Attitude and the New Statesman.

A second edition was published in June 2007.

He was the publisher of the Total Politics magazine between 2008 and 2012, and the managing director of Biteback Publishing until May 2018.

Since September 2010, he has hosted a regular discussion show on the radio station LBC.

He also presented BBC Radio Four's The Westminster Hour, People & Politics on the BBC World Service and a number of episodes of What the Papers Say between 2010 and 2016.

Dale was a stand-in presenter for the London radio station LBC 97.3 during the first nine months of 2010 after doing a couple of test programmes with other journalists.

With Gaby Hinsliff, he co-presented LBC's six-hour election night programme on 7 May 2010.

In May and June 2010, he presented the Petrie Hosken, Clive Bull, James Max and Jeni Barnett phone-in shows, and on 22 June 2010 fronted LBC's budget coverage.

In late July 2010, Dale started a six-week stint on LBC covering for Petrie Hosken and Andrew Pierce, which later turned into a regular show.

In July 2011, Dale started a collaborative blog site, Dale & Co, with many contributors from the political spectrum, including himself.

He continues to author a blog entitled West Ham Till I Die, in which he writes on West Ham United.

Dale writes a weekly diary column for the website ConservativeHome, where he also publishes his annual list of the '100 most influential people on the Right'.

He was named Radio Presenter of the Year at the Arqiva Commercial Radio Awards in both 2013 and 2016.

Dale was born in Cambridge and grew up in Essex, where he attended Ashdon County Primary School and Saffron Walden County High School.

After a gap year in which he worked as a nursing assistant at the Werner Wicker Klinik in West Germany, he read German, linguistics and teaching English as a foreign language at the University of East Anglia; his course included a year in which he taught English at the gymnasium in Besigheim.

Dale was the weekly evening presenter on LBC from 7 to 10pm until March 2013, when Clive Bull took over.

Dale instead replaced broadcaster James Whale as the presenter of the Drivetime show between 4pm and 7pm Monday to Friday.

He continued to present the station's Sunday Politics show between 10am and 1pm each weekend for a further few weeks in March 2013 until Andrew Gilligan took over.

Dale was shortlisted for Speech Radio Programme of the Year at the 2013 Sony Radio Academy Awards, and then went on to win Radio Presenter of the Year at the 2013 and 2016 Arqiva Commercial Radio Awards.

He won a Silver Sony for Interview of the Year at the 2014 Sony Awards for his interview with James from Woolwich, who was an eyewitness to the murder of Lee Rigby.

Dale currently co-hosts a weekly political and current affairs podcast, entitled For The Many, alongside Jacqui Smith.

Dale has often appeared on television programmes such as Newsnight, The Andrew Marr Show, Jeremy Vine and Good Morning Britain.

Dale wrote a blog titled Iain Dale's Diary.

Dale has written histories of West Ham United and Norwich City football clubs for Haynes Publishing, and in 2015, wrote a book called The NHS: Things That Need to be Said for Elliott & Thompson.

In December 2018, it was announced that he would contribute a new weekly column to both the Eastern Daily Press and its Archant stablemate, the East Anglian Daily Times.

Dale has written or edited 46 political books.

On 3 September 2018, LBC changed their autumn schedule: Dale moved to the evening show (7–10pm).

Dale formerly presented Planet Politics on Oneword Radio.

He was also the chief presenter on the failed internet TV station 18 Doughty Street.