Journalist and broadcaster. Born in Dumfries, the daughter of a solicitor, and now based in Glasgow, Kirsty Wark is one of Scotland's most respected journalists and television presenters. She was educated at Kilmarnock Grammar Primary and Wellington School in Ayr, before reading history at the University of Edinburgh. Wark joined BBC Radio Scotland as a researcher in 1976, but was soon appointed to producer of Good Morning Scotland. She began in television in 1982 and was soon working in front of the camera. For the BBC, her work included presenting Newsnight, Reporting Scotland and Left, Right and Centre. She has established a production company with her husband, Alan Clements, and is a regular political commentator and presenter of election coverage. In 2004, Wark Clements merged with Ideal World, run by Muriel Gray (b.1959), to form IWC Media.
Wark has a reputation as a demanding interviewer, and famously locked horns with the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. She has been nominated for numerous awards for her work and has been dubbed the most influential woman in Scotland by a Sunday newspaper. Wark was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2017.
Wark has also courted controversy through her documentary The Gathering Place (2005) relating the saga behind the building of the new Scottish Parliament, which was accused of bias, provoked in part because Wark had herself been a member of the panel which appointed the architect. She was later suspended by the BBC when further accusations of bias were levelled when she and her husband had joined First Minister Jack McConnell (b.1960) and his wife at their Spanish villa.
Wark remains in demand as a presenter and host.
