Martin Sixsmith has worked as an adviser to the Labour government and to the BBC television comedy series The Thick of It.
15 Facts About Martin Sixsmith
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Sixsmith's book about Philomena Lee, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, was the basis for the 2013 film Philomena, in which Sixsmith is played by Steve Coogan.
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Martin Sixsmith was a Slavics Tutor at Harvard, and wrote his postgraduate thesis about Russian poetry.
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Martin Sixsmith joined the BBC in 1980 as a foreign correspondent, reporting from Moscow during the presidencies of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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Martin Sixsmith reported from Poland during the Solidarity uprising and was the BBC's Washington correspondent during the election and first presidential term of Bill Clinton.
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Martin Sixsmith was based in Russia for five years, the US for four, Brussels for four and Poland for three.
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Martin Sixsmith left the BBC in 1997 to work for the newly elected government of Tony Blair.
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Martin Sixsmith became Director of Communications, working first with Harriet Harman and Frank Field, then with Alistair Darling.
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Martin Sixsmith incurred the displeasure of Tony Blair when his email advising Byers and Moore not to bury more bad news was leaked to the press.
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Martin Sixsmith was widely expected to write a memoir or autobiography in the wake of his civil service departure.
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In 2007, Martin Sixsmith wrote The Litvinenko File, an examination of the feud between the Kremlin and Russia's emigre oligarchs.
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In 2011, Martin Sixsmith presented Russia: The Wild East, a 50-part history of Russia for BBC Radio 4.
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Martin Sixsmith continued to work as an adviser to the BBC political sitcom, The Thick of It, and the Oscar-nominated film, In the Loop.
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In 2014, Martin Sixsmith presented a 25-part BBC Radio 4 series about the history of psychology and psychiatry, In Search of Ourselves.
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In 2022, Martin Sixsmith co-wrote The Russia Conundrum: How the West Fell for Putin's Power Gambit, with the former oligarch and liberal opposition campaigner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.