Across the pond

This year’s winner of the Laurence Stern Fellowship is Alexi Mostrous, a 29 year old journalist on The Times, pictured here. He is not one of the multitude who has always wanted to be a journalist. He spent three years training and eight months practising as a barrister before he realised that journalism was what he really wanted to do. Like Larry Stern, (the national editor of the Washington Post, whose British and American friends established the fellowship to honour his memory) his strength is investigative reporting. In just two years on The Times he has made the front page several times, notably for his investigations into government IT sytems and the leaking of credit card details.

The fellowship does not always go to an investigative journalist, Jim Naughtie, the 1981 fellow, won it because of his understanding of US and British politics and the strength of his interviewing skills, which he is currently exercising on BBC radio at breakfast time. Mostrous is more like the first fellow, David Leigh, The Guardian investigative journalist(pictured alongside), who showed Jonathan Aitken how to use the ‘sword of truth’. Like Leigh, Mostrous studied English at Cambridge. Which helps to fuel my prejudice that you can learn an awful lot about real life from reading novels.

Mostrous is the thirtieth Stern fellow. And, if my memory is right, is the first with Greek blood in his veins.

Apologies for the photography, which I would like to blame on my mobile phone or the lighting at the Frontline Club, which hosted last night’s party. But the evidence shows otherwise, because the shot of Marcus Brauchli, the new Washington Post editor, came out OK and it was taken under exactly the same conditions. The fault, I am afraid, lies with the photographer.

Perhaps I should send myself on a course.