John Witherow is one of the longest-serving Editors in Britain.

A former journalist with Reuters, he joined News UK (previously News International) in 1980 and was appointed Editor of The Sunday Times in 1994 and Editor of The Times in 2013.

John started his career in South West Africa (now Namibia) in 1970 with the aim of teaching in Ovamboland on the Angolan border. Regarded as an anti-apartheid activist, he was refused a permit to go there by the South African government, which governed South West Africa at the time.

Instead John was asked by Colin Winter, the late Bishop of Damaraland, to set up a library for African students in Windhoek, the capital. With the help of John Kane Berman, now CEO of the South African Institute of Race Relations, he managed to raise money for the library from Paul Hamlyn, the British publisher and philanthropist.

During this time, John took over as a BBC stringer after his colleague, David de Beer, was expelled from South West Africa and later banned in South Africa. While working for the BBC, John secured an interview with Chief Clemens Kapuuo, Chief of the Herero tribe and a leading critic of the South Africans. Kapuuo was assassinated in 1978.

After university, John was taken on by Reuters news agency in 1977 and sent to the Cardiff School of Journalism, where he gained a distinction. He worked in Madrid for a year for Reuters before joining the Times as a reporter in 1980. In his first week he covered the Iranian embassy siege and later the Iran-Iraq war.

In 1982, John was sent on the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible to cover the Falklands war. After reporting on the air war and surviving Exocet attacks that destroyed HMS Sheffield, he was put ashore with 5 Infantry Brigade, consisting of the Welsh and Scots Guards and the Gurkhas. John came under bomb attack while on an ammunition ship and was close by when Argentine aircraft struck RFA Galahad, killing 48 servicemen – the biggest single loss of the war.

After the fall of Port Stanley in June, 1982, John returned to the UK on a Hercules plane with the SAS. He wrote a book, The Winter War, The Falklands, with Patrick Bishop, a war correspondent for The Observer newspaper. In the same year, John spent six months in Boston and Washington for the Boston Globe.

John moved to The Sunday Times in 1983 under the editorship of Andrew Neil. There he served in several positions, including Defence Editor, Diplomatic Editor, Foreign Editor and head of News. John was made Acting Editor after the departure of Neil in 1994. He was confirmed in the job the following year.

John presided over the expansion of The Sunday Times and its sales and commercial success. The paper broke a series of powerful news stories under his editorship, including cash for questions, cash for honours and cash for amendments in the House of Lords and the abuse of the expenses system in the upper house. Several peers were fined, suspended and one was jailed as a result. These stories helped lead to reform of the Houses of Parliament.

He was Editor when the sports journalist David Walsh alleged that US cyclist Lance Armstrong was cheating using illegal drugs. Armstrong sued The Sunday Times and the paper had to settle. Only later did US authorities prove he was using performance-enhancing drugs and he was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles. The paper recovered its damages and costs from Armstrong. The episode was made into a film called The Program (2015).

John also presided over the start of the Insight investigation into corruption at FIFA, which ultimately led to the suspension of Sepp Blatter in 2015.

In early 2013 he was made Editor of The Times in succession to James Harding. The Times Independent Directors confirmed the appointment in September of that year.

Under John’s editorship, now one of the longest-serving Editors for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation titles, The Times became profitable for the first time in 13 years in 2014 (having launched a subscription model in 2010). The title won Newspaper of the Year for two years in succession in 2013 and 2014.

John launched a digital Irish edition of The Times in September 2015. The Times moved to an edition-based digital publishing model in March 2016.