As the General Election approached, the UK’s relationship with Europe was high up on the agendas of political parties.
The University of Kent, the UK’s European university, hosted a pre-election debate on Saturday 21 March 2015.
Born in Glasgow and brought up in Edinburgh and Northern Ireland, Gavin Esler has worked
for the BBC since 1977. He was its White House-based
Chief North American Correspondent
between 1989 and 1998, and has more recently
been one of the three main presenters on
BBC2’s Newsnight, as well as the main presenter on
Dateline London (BBC World and BBC News
Channel). He is the winner of a Royal Television
Society Award, and in 2007 he won a Sony Gold Award
for his radio documentary report on Sami al-Hajj,
one of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay.
Following the broadcast, al-Hajj was released
from American custody.
Gavin Esler is also a regular newspaper and magazine writer and commentator. As an author, he has written a book on American discontent (The United States of Anger, 1997), a book on leadership (Lessons from the Top – The three universal stories that all successful leaders tell, 2013) and five novels. He is a BAFTA member and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
He graduated from Kent with a BA in English and American Literature in 1974, and was awarded an honorary MA in 1995 by the University and an honorary Doctor of Civil Law in 2005. Dr Esler was installed as Chancellor of the University in July 2014.
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