Daniel Trilling
Hello, I’m Daniel Trilling -- a journalist and author based in London. You can contact me at daniel dot trilling dot journalist at gmail dot com.
My journalism, which was shortlisted for the 2022 and 2023 Orwell Prizes, focuses on human rights and politics. I’ve written books on refugees in Europe and Britain’s far right and I’m currently a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and the Guardian.
I’m also an associate lecturer in journalism at London College of Communication, where I help out with the Refugee Journalism Project, a training and mentoring scheme for exiled media workers in the UK.
See below for examples of my work and more info about my books.
Selected journalism
This time it's worse: on the racist riots of summer 2024 (London Review of Books, August 2024)
Slow Waltz: truth, reconciliation and the Northern Ireland Troubles Legacy Act (London Review of Books, June 2024)
‘Incoherence and inconsistency’: the inside story of the Rwanda deportation plan (Guardian long read, October 2023)
Citizenship restored: on reclaiming the nationality the Nazis stripped from my grandmother (London Review of Books, September 2023)
Destitute by design: meet the people trapped by the UK's immigration system (Prospect, March 2023)
Not much like consent: a profile of the Metropolitan Police (London Review of Books, March 2023)
A Place That Belongs to Us: an essay in fragments (Granta, June 2022)
Now he had opps: what's behind London's rise in youth violence? (London Review of Books, May 2022)
The Humboldt Forum: is Germany's new mega-museum a 'decolonising' project, or a gift to the right? (Apollo, January 2022)
Cruel, paranoid, failing: inside the Home Office (Guardian long read, May 2021)
Golden Dawn: the rise and fall of Greece's neo-Nazis (Guardian long read, March 2020)
‘I’ve earned my reputation out of other people’s downfall’ – an interview with Don McCullin (Apollo, February 2020)
How the media contributed to the migrant crisis (Guardian long read, August 2019)
Tommy Robinson and the far right's new playbook (Guardian long read, September 2018)
Should we build a wall around North Wales? The refugee crisis (London Review of Books, July 2017)
Lights in the Distance
Between 2012 and 2017 my reporting focused on refugees in Europe, winning a Migration Media Award and being shortlisted for an Amnesty Media Award. My book Lights in the Distance: Exile and Refuge at the Borders of Europe (Picador, 2018) is a portrait of Europe’s refugee crisis as seen by the people at the centre of it.
The English edition was shortlisted for Stanford Dolman book of the year and the Italian edition won the Libri contro la fame literary prize.
Bloody Nasty People
My first book, Bloody Nasty People: the Rise of Britain’s Far Right (Verso, 2012), is a reported history of the British National Party. It shows how mainstream anti-immigration rhetoric and growing political discontent allowed a party founded and led by neo-Nazis to enjoy unprecedented success in England during the 2000s.
Bloody Nasty People was shortlisted for Total Politics debut book of the year and longlisted for the Orwell Prize.
Other book contributions
I’ve also written chapters for various collections, including Broke: Fixing Britain’s Poverty Crisis (Biteback, 2023), Looking for an Enemy: 8 Essays on Antisemitism (Short Books, 2021) and Lost in Media: Migrant Perspectives and the Public Sphere (Valiz, 2019).
Author photo by Mari Bastashevski.
