From death to life: our obituaries editor reflects on her craft

Speakers

• Ann Wroe

  Obituaries editor

  Ann Wroe is the obituaries editor, writing the weekly column since 2003. She has held a variety of posts at the paper since joining in 1976, including Books and Arts editor (1988-92) and US editor (1992-2000). Earlier, she worked at the BBC World Service, covering French and Italian politics. Ann has written nine books on subjects as diverse as the Iran-Contra Affair, life in a medieval French town, biographies of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Pontius Pilate, and works on St Francis and Orpheus. Her latest book is "Lifescapes: A biographer's search for the soul" (Jonathan Cape, 2023). Ann holds a doctorate in medieval history from Oxford and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Society of Literature and the English Association. She is married with three sons and lives in London.
• Kenneth Cukier

  Deputy executive editor

  Kenneth Cukier is deputy executive editor, following 20 years at the paper, where he was a foreign correspondent and By-invitation editor, among other roles. He is the coauthor of the bestselling book “Big Data”, which was translated into over 20 languages. His latest book is “Framers” on the power of mental models and limits of AI. Previously Kenn was the technology editor of the Wall Street Journal Asia in Hong Kong and worked at the International Herald Tribune in Paris. He has been a research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and at Oxford’s Saïd Business School, as well as a board director of Chatham House. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.