Robert Hardman

Robert Hardman has been producing razor-sharp reporting and incisive commentary for the Daily Mail since 2001. A royal expert, he has also been part of the BBC commentary team at major state occasions, including the funeral of Queen Elizabeth and the coronation of King Charles. But, at heart, he is a brilliant journalist, whose empathy, perceptiveness and judgment mean he can bring any topic, scandal or crisis to entrancing life.

A dispatch in March found Hardman reporting from inner-city Birmingham’s ‘Benefits Street’ which, 10 years, previously, was the subject of one of the most successful British reality soaps of recent times.

At first it seemed to Hardman that little had changed. ‘No sooner have I alighted at the nearest tram stop than I walk into a foul-mouthed, drug-related showdown between two semi-coherent men in their early 40s who might charitably be described as having mental health issues,’ he wrote. Yet, fair-minded and insightful as always, he found a more positive updated picture in the many residents in work, the primary school rated ‘outstanding’ by Oftsted, and the community spirit among those who felt the programme badly misrepresented their street. ‘The one thing they can say with certainty is that they will not be taking part in a sequel.’

In June, Hardman reported from France on the atmosphere ahead of the parliamentary elections, triggered by what he called a ‘hissy fit’ from President Macron, leaving French voters with a choice between what had been described as the ‘plague’ of the far right and the ‘cholera’ of the far left.

He tested public opinion in a wide range of places, including a meeting of business leaders, a former factory town outside Paris, and council flats on the northern edge of the capital, childhood home of the far-Right Rassemblement National’s candidate for Prime Minister, Jordan Bardella, and found the French electorate in a state of desperation. ‘As even the fondest Francophiles will admit,’ he wrote, ‘this country is now more divided, more ill-¬tempered and feeling more uncertain than it has been in half a century.’

In August, Hardman took a close look at the tragic sinking of the yacht Bayesian and the death of Mike Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah and five others. He reported from the site of the tragedy, describing in unbearably poignant detail the scene on the dock when Hannah’s body was recovered and the continuing efforts of investigators to find out what caused such a sudden catastrophe. ‘As so many aspects of this tragedy have become more baffling,’ he wrote, ‘others have become very much clearer. Chief among them is the loss to this country of a patriotic genius whose extraordinary talents were about to deliver new breakthroughs. ‘For, make no mistake, words such as “tycoon” and “entrepreneur” do not begin to describe Mike Lynch. This Ilford-raised son of an Irish fireman was the innovator who could not stop coming up with new ideas so complex that much of the business world found it hard to keep up.’