Marina Hyde

Hyde is the daughter of Sir Alastair Edgcumbe James Dudley-Williams, 2nd Baronet, and his wife, the former Diana Elizabeth Jane Duncan.[1] Through her father, she is the granddaughter of aviation pioneer and Conservative politician Sir Rolf Dudley-Williams, 1st Baronet. She attended Downe House School,[2] and read English at Christ Church, Oxford.[3]

Hyde began her career in journalism as a temporary secretary on the showbiz desk at The Sun newspaper.[3][4] In an otherwise unrelated article in The Guardian, she wrote: "I am only called Marina Hyde because my real name was too long to fit across a single column in The Sun, where I started out".[5] She was later sacked by Sun editor David Yelland after it emerged she had been exchanging emails with Piers Morgan, editor of rival newspaper the Daily Mirror.[6]

Since 2000, Hyde has worked at The Guardian, at first writing the newspaper's Diary column. She contributes three columns a week: one on sport, one on celebrity, and one which is typically about politics. Her sport column appears on Thursday; her celebrity column is entitled Lost in Showbiz and appears in the G2 supplement each Friday. She has a regular serious column in the main section of The Guardian on Saturday, as well as a column in the "Weekend" supplement, in which she parodies a celebrity diary entry. This is entitled A Peek at the Diary of..., which ends in the sign-off, "As seen by Marina Hyde". Hyde was nominated as Columnist of the Year in the 2010 British Press Awards.

A libel action brought by Elton John against The Guardian, in reaction to Hyde's spoof diary column "A peek at the diary of... 'Sir Elton John'", published in July 2008,[7] was rejected. The judge, Mr Justice Tugendhat, said that in this case "irony" and "teasing" do not amount to defamation.[8] Hyde published a follow-up diary of Elton John in 2009.[9]

In November 2011, The Guardian was required to apologise to The Sun newspaper for an article in which Hyde had falsely alleged the newspaper had visited the home of a member of the legal team of the Leveson Inquiry. In the front-page story Hyde had accused The Sun of "blowing a giant raspberry at Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry".[10][11] The Sun's then[12] managing editor Richard Caseby sent a toilet roll accompanied by "a squalid note" to Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger after Hyde's false story.[13]

A few months later, Caseby once again objected to an article by Hyde in which, according to Roy Greenslade, she was "employing irony",[14] in a reference to Page 3 models following a comment on Twitter by Rupert Murdoch and the use by The Sun of a photograph of model Reeva Steenkamp in a bikini, on the day after her murder.[15] Caseby objected to the article,[16] and complained to The Guardian's readers' editor, but his complaint was the only one received.[17]

Hyde received two awards from the Sports Journalists' Association (SJA) in February 2020, including Sports Journalist of the Year, the first woman to receive the award in its 43-year history. The other award was for Sports Columnist of the Year. She had worked during the year on stories concerning the decision to award a knighthood to Geoff Boycott, Tiger Woods at the 2019 Masters and the Women's World Cup.[18]

Hyde's book about celebrity, Celebrity: How Entertainers Took Over the World and Why We Need an Exit Strategy, was published in 2009.[19]

She appeared occasionally as a reviewer on the BBC's Newsnight Review.[20]

In 1999, Hyde married Kieran Oliver Edward Clifton.[21][22] The couple had a child in 2010 and live in London.[1][22] Their third child was born in summer 2014.[23]

• Marina Hyde profile at The Guardian, including an archive of columns
• Who Comments? - Marina Hyde