Richard Girling was editorial manager of the <i>Sunday Times Magazine</i>, had a regular column for the <i>Daily Telegraph</i> during the 1990s, and is now a senior feature writer on the <i>Sunday Times Magazine</i>. He won the Evian Award in 1989 for a special issue of <i>Sunday Times Magazine</i> on the medical effects of alcohol and, in 2002, the Specialist Writer of the Year at the UK Press Awards. He is a consultant to <i>Reader’s Digest</i> and to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.