Toby Harnden has been the US Executive Editor of Mail Online and US Editor of The Daily Mail of London since January 1st 2012. He was previously US Editor of The Daily Telegraph of London for five years, overseeing all aspects of the Telegraph Media Group’s American coverage. He is a weekly newspaper columnist and he has reported from all 50 US states. He made several reporting trips to Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010 while working on his new book Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Real Story of Britain’s War in Afghanistan, to be published by Quercus in March 2011.
As The Sunday Telegraph’s Chief Foreign Correspondent from 2005 to 2006, Harnden reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Bahrain, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Austria, Italy, Estonia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the United States and Thailand. In 2005, he was imprisoned in Zimbabwe for 14 days after being arrested and charged with ‘practicing journalism without accreditation’. He was subsequently acquitted, deported and banned from Zimbabwe.
Harnden was Middle East Correspondent of The Daily Telegraph from 2003, based in Jerusalem but travelling throughout the region. He spent much of 2004 and 2005 covering the war in Iraq. He was a "unilateral" reporter during the siege of Najaf in August 2004 and three months later was embedded with the US Army's Task Force 2-2 during the battle of Fallujah.
From 1999 to 2003, Harnden was The Daily Telegraph's Washington bureau chief. He was in Washington on September 11th 2001. He joined The Daily Telegraph in 1994 as a home news reporter before being posted to Belfast as the newspaper's Ireland Correspondent in 1996. He subsequently covered the Good Friday Agreement and the Omagh bombing of 1998 as well as numerous explosions, ceasefires, shootings, riots, marches and political crises. The culmination of his work in Northern Ireland was the publication of ‘Bandit Country': The IRA & South Armagh (Hodder & Stoughton 1999), which has sold more than 100,000 copies worldwide and is considered essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the Irish Troubles.
Harnden was born in Portsmouth in 1966 and grew up in Marple, Cheshire and Rusholme, Manchester. After leaving St Bede’s College, Manchester in 1984, he was commissioned into the Royal Navy and attended Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. He then went up to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he was elected president of the Junior Common Room in 1987 and awarded a First in Modern History from Oxford University in 1988. He received a College Prize for academic work and the Miles Clauson Prize for contribution to college life. Harnden retired from the Navy in 1994 as a Lieutenant after service ashore and at sea in the assault ships HMS Fearless, and HMS Intrepid, the minesweeper HMS Itchen, the destroyers HMS Manchester and HMS Edinburgh and the frigate HMS Cornwall. During his training he was an exchange officer with the Royal Norwegian Navy, helping to transport reindeer on troop landing craft. His final naval appointment was in the Ministry of Defence as Flag Lieutenant to the Second Sea Lord.
He began in journalism as a theatre reviewer at the Edinburgh Fringe and as an obituary writer before becoming a full-time news reporter with The Daily Telegraph, based at its head office in London. Harnden has also worked for the Leith Leader, The Scotsman, the Western Morning News (Plymouth) and The Independent. He has been published in The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Sun, The Spectator (UK), Literary Review, Naval Review, East End Life, Oxford Student, Conde Nast Traveller, Grazia and the American Spectator.
A regular broadcaster, Harnden has appeared on CNN, PBS, Fox, MSNBC, CNBC, BBC, Sky, GMTV, Channel 4 News as well as outlets in the Republic of Ireland, Canada and Australia. He has spoken at Harvard and Oxford Universities.
Harnden lives in McLean, Virginia with his wife Cheryl and their young children Tessa and Miles.