Matt Roper

Senior feature writer Matt Roper is known for his versatility as a writer and ability to connect with readers, as well as his often exhaustive research in the pursuit of a fascinating story.

His work ranges from exclusive front-of-the-book investigations to new human angles on current and historical events and moving never-before-told real stories, but always written with fluency, sensitivity and attention to detail.

His first entry was the result of a seven-week investigation after learning of rumours that two British men were fighting for Russia in Ukraine. Matt’s work monitoring several social media accounts and Telegram channels and tracking down friends and family in the UK paid off with fascinating details of the men’s lives, their activities on the frontline and interviews with both. The story and subsequent days were followed up by most national newspapers and TV news and led to Scotland Yard’s terrorism unit requesting our material.

Matt’s second entry shows both his ability to uncover a unique story and to tell it in a moving and relatable way, after he travelled to Jersey and got the first interview with the widow of one of only four Channel Islanders to be sent to Nazi death camps.

The final entry is a first person piece telling his own remarkable journey after finding a young girl selling her body on a Brazilian motorway. In perhaps the greatest example of a writer becoming involved with their story, the encounter led to him starting a charity which has rescued hundreds of children from child prostitution.