31 Facts About Giles Coren

Giles Robin Patrick Coren was born on 29 July 1969 and is a British columnist, food writer, and television and radio presenter.

Giles Coren has been a restaurant critic for The Times newspaper since 2002, and was named Food and Drink Writer of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2005.

Giles Coren was born in Paddington, London, the only son of Anne and English journalist and humourist Alan Giles Coren.

Giles Coren's father had been brought up in an Orthodox Jewish household, but his own upbringing was less Orthodox.

Giles Coren is the elder brother of journalist Victoria Coren Mitchell, and related to the Canadian journalist Michael Coren.

Giles Coren was educated at The Hall School, an independent boys' junior school in Hampstead, London, and at Westminster School, an independent boys' senior school in Central London, followed by Keble College at the University of Oxford, where he was awarded a first-class degree in English.

Giles Coren has been a restaurant critic for The Times since 2002, having previously been restaurant critic for Tatler magazine and The Independent on Sunday.

Giles Coren was named "Food And Drink Writer of the Year" at the 2005 British Press Awards and in 2016 was named Restaurant Writer of the Year at the Fortnum and Mason Awards.

Giles Coren has contributed articles to publications including Tatler and GQ.

Giles Coren is credited by inventor James Dyson as the co-author of his autobiography published in 1997.

Giles Coren has written two non-fiction books: the first, Anger Management, a compilation of columns he had written for The Times, which was published in 2010; and his second, How To Eat Out, which was published in 2012.

In 2005, Giles Coren appeared as a regular correspondent on Gordon Ramsay's The F Word.

Giles Coren co-presented the Channel 4 series Animal Farm with Dr Olivia Judson in March 2007.

Also in 2006, Giles Coren presented the film and DVD review programme Movie Lounge.

In 2012, Giles Coren presented Our Food on the BBC, travelling the country talking about various local foods.

Giles Coren followed that up with Million Dollar Critic for BBC America, which premiered on 22 January 2015 directly after Gordon Ramsay's New Kitchen Nightmares.

In 2015, Giles Coren began a new BBC series, co-presented with social historian Polly Russell.

In 2016, Giles Coren filmed Back in Time for Brixton and Further Back in Time for Dinner and the two were released in 2016 and 2017 respectively.

In 2016, Giles Coren fronted the one-off documentary My Failed Novel for Sky Arts.

Between September 2019 and July 2020, Giles Coren presented a weekly programme on Talkradio, on Sundays from 7pm to 10pm.

Giles Coren stated that Poles used to burn Jews in synagogues for entertainment at Easter; and that Poland is in denial about its role in the Holocaust.

Giles Coren referred to immigrant Poles as "Polacks", arguing that "if England is not the land of milk and honey it appeared to them three or four years ago, then, frankly, they can clear off out of it".

Giles Coren's comments led to a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission, an early day motion in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and a critical editorial in The Economist.

Giles Coren said that amid an internal debate about an FRA response, a Cypriot colleague who had a tendency to relativize, had said "it is not even certain that what Coren stated with regard to his past had taken place at all".

Halmai responded that while the generalisation used by Giles Coren was unacceptable, it was protected under freedom of expression, conceding the existence of the Jedwabne, Krakow and Kielce pogroms.

In December 2018, it was discovered that Giles Coren had an alternative Twitter account that "he once used to suggest people critical of him were motivated by antisemitism".

The account stated to be of a Polish plumber with a bio composed in broken English and Giles Coren's book cover as avatar.

In July 2021, following the death of the journalist Dawn Foster, Giles Coren tweeted the following:.

Giles Coren's comments stirred considerable controversy, with several figures in the media criticising him, and some calling for him to lose his jobs with The Times and Times Radio.

Giles Coren wrote that "exploiters" of fried chicken recipes in chain restaurants had brought "obesity, sloth, waste, [and] high street degradation" to white communities.

Giles Coren met his wife Esther Walker, a journalist, author and food blogger, around 2007.