Matthew Lewis Engel (born 11 June 1951) is a British writer, journalist and editor.

Early life and education

Engel was born in Northampton, son of solicitor Max David Engel (1912-2005) and Betty Ruth (née Lesser). His grandfather had escaped anti-Semitic persecution in Poland. He was educated at Great Houghton Prep School, Carmel College, Oxfordshire, and Manchester University.

Career

He began his career in 1972 as a staff journalist on The Guardian newspaper for nearly 25 years, reporting on a wide range of political and sporting events including a period as Washington correspondent beginning on 9/11. He later wrote columns in the Financial Times and now contributes to both these papers. Engel edited the 1993–2000 and 2004–2007 editions of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, with a short break when he worked in the US. He has been a strong critic of the International Cricket Council, international cricket's ruling body. Engel was the visiting professor of media at the University of Oxford for 2011. He was elected as a councillor for Herefordshire in October 2023 in a by-election for Golden Valley South ward.

Personal life

Engel lives on an old farm in Herefordshire. In 1990, he married former editorial director at Pan Books Hilary, daughter of Laurence Davies. They had a son, Laurie, and adopted a daughter, Victoria (Vika), from Russia. Laurie died of cancer in 2005, aged 13, and Engel set up a successful charity fund in his memory, the Laurie Engel Fund, which has raised more than £1.2m in partnership with the Teenage Cancer Trust to build a new unit for patients in Birmingham (opened 2010) and for a cancer centre scheduled for 2018. The proceeds of a book he wrote, Extracts from the Red Notebooks (Macmillan), are donated to this fund. His book, That’s The Way It Crumbles: The American Conquest of the English Language (Profile Books) was published in June 2017.

Works