Bidisha Mamata is a British broadcaster, presenter and critic across TV, film, radio, newspapers and magazines. She specialises in international human rights, current affairs and the arts and culture and offers political analysis, arts critique and cultural diplomacy tying these interests together. She writes for the main UK broadsheets (currently as a columnist and arts critic for The Observer and The Guardian) and presents and commentates heavily for BBC TV and radio, CNN, Channel 5, Channel 4 News and Sky News, where she has been a regular since 2016. Her fifth book, Asylum and Exile: Hidden Voices of London (2015), is based on her outreach work in UK prisons, refugee charities and detention centres.
Her latest publication, an essay called The Future of Serious Art, came out in November 2020 and her latest film series, Aurora, launched in October 2020 and ran until spring 2023. Her first film, An Impossible Poison, premiered in Berlin in November 2017 and received its London premier in March 2018. It has been highly critically acclaimed and selected for numerous international film festivals. She is currently presenting the Hello Happiness audio series for the Wellcome Trust.
A much more detailed biography is below:
TV, radio, film:
Bidisha is a presenter for BBC TV, Radio 3, Radio 4 and the World Service. She was a regular guest on BBC Two's Newsnight Review (later The Review Show), Sunday Morning Live and The Big Questions. For BBC Radio 4 she contributes frequently to Saturday Review and Woman's Hour, both of which she has guest presented, and Front Row, and has presented Archive on Four, Heart and Soul and various other documentaries and series. Standalone documentaries have included Texting Andy Warhol, on the role of text in art (R4); An Unofficial Iris, a study of Iris Murdoch's work and legacy (R4); The Red Book, an investigation into Jung's Red Book (R3); and The Countertenor, a highly acclaimed exploration of the countertenor voice for Radio 4. Bidisha was the regular presenter of BBC Radio 3's arts and ideas programme, Night Waves, from 2008. On the World Service she guest presented the books programme The Word was the regular presenter of the flagship arts show, The Strand and now presents for the arts series In The Studio and The Arts Hour. As of 2015 she has also been a regular Sky News commentator on social justice issues and the refugee crisis, and since 2016 has been a fortnightly newspaper reviewer for the Sky News breakfast show. Since 2020 she has worked closely with Channel 5 on a rang of arts, pop culture and royal documentaries, and since 2021 she has worked with CNN on their royal coverage and UK current affairs.
Newspapers, magazines, books:
Bidisha began writing for arts magazines i-D, Oyster, Volume, Dazed and Confused and the NME at 14. She signed her first book deal, with HarperCollins, at 16. Her first novel, Seahorses, was published to commercial and critical success when she was 18. During this time she also had regular opinion columns in The Big Issue magazine and The Independent. Bidisha's second novel, the thriller Too Fast to Live, was published when she was 21. Bidisha then lectured in political theory, was a contributing editor of the women's magazine Sibyl and style magazine 2nd Generation and edited the arts magazine The Stealth Corporation. Her third book, the travel memoir Venetian Masters, was published in February 2008.
She currently writes for The Guardian, the Financial Times, Mslexia, The Observer, New Statesman, New Humanist, The List, The Huffington Post, the Times Literary Supplement, Sight and Sound, BBC Arts, Poetry Review and various publications internationally. From the end of 2010 to early 2012 she had a weekly column in The Guardian called Bidisha's Thought for The Day. In 2013 Johns Hopkins University awarded her an International Reporting Project fellowship to report on global health and development for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Bidisha's fourth book, out May 2012, is the acclaimed reportage Beyond the Wall: Writing A Path Through Palestine, published by Seagull/Chicago University Press. Her poetry has been published by Wasafiri magazine, Seagull Books, Saqi Books, English PEN and Young MWA magazine and performed at numerous venues including the Tower of London. She has mentored numerous other writers and judged numerous literary, arts and human rights prizes.
Bidisha Mamata was born in London and educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls. She then studied Old and Middle English at Oxford University, where she was a college scholar. She then gained an MSc in Economic History, Moral and Political Philosophy and Philosophy of the Social Sciences at the London School of Economics.
