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Huw Edwards ( , ; born 18 August 1961) is a Welsh news presenter. He was the lead presenter of BBC News at Ten, the late evening news programme of BBC Television, from 2003 to 2023. He resigned from the BBC in 2024, during a police investigation into child pornography offences to which he pleaded guilty.
At the BBC, Edwards anchored coverage of state and international events, and occasionally presented on BBC News at Six, BBC News at One, BBC Weekend News, Daily Politics and the international news channel BBC World News. He presented coverage of major royal events, including the death and state funeral of Elizabeth II and the coronation of Charles III and Camilla. He also presented BBC News at Five, which was broadcast on BBC News from 2006 until 2020. He was the lead presenter for the 2019 general election coverage.
In July 2023, Edwards was suspended by the BBC following allegations of sexual misconduct made in The Sun. The South Wales Police and the Metropolitan Police found no evidence of criminal conduct. Edwards was hospitalised with depression shortly afterwards, and resigned in April 2024. In July, he pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent images of children by receiving them during online chats. On 16 September, he was given a six-month suspended jail sentence and placed on the sex offenders' register.
Edwards was educated at Llanelli Boys' Grammar School. In 1978 he applied to Hertford College, Oxford, but was rejected. He graduated with a first-class honours degree in French from University College, Cardiff, in 1983. After his first degree, he started postgraduate work at Cardiff University in Medieval French, before becoming a reporter for local radio station Swansea Sound and then joining the BBC.
In 2018, Edwards was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree, with a thesis on Welsh Nonconformist chapels in Llanelli and London, by the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. His doctoral thesis was titled O Dinopolis i Fetropolis: arolwg o lanw a thrai achosion Ymneilltuol Cymraeg yn Llanelli a Llundain, 1714–2014 ("From Tinopolis to Metropolis: A Survey of the Ebb and Flow of Welsh Dissenting Causes in Llanelli and London, 1714–2014"). He said, "It's 12 years since I was here to receive an honorary fellowship which was a great day but today is an even bigger day because I am receiving my PhD after 7 agonising years of hard work on the history of the Welsh chapels in the 18th century."
Between 1994 and January 2003, Edwards presented the BBC Six O'Clock News, then the most watched news programme in Britain. In January 2003, Edwards became the main presenter of the Ten O'Clock News on BBC One, the BBC's flagship news broadcast. He also presented various special programmes such as the Festival of Remembrance. He led the BBC commentary team at the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, 2012 London Olympics and 2014 Commonwealth Games. He presented several election specials, including coverage of the 2007 National Assembly for Wales election for BBC Wales and the BBC coverage of the results of the 2008 United States elections and the inauguration of Barack Obama. He was formerly chief political correspondent for BBC News, and spent more than 14 years reporting politics from Westminster across a range of BBC programmes.
Edwards presented or contributed to a range of other BBC News programmes, including Breakfast News, One O'Clock News, Newsnight and Panorama. From April 2006 until 2020, he presented the BBC News at Five on the 24-hour BBC News channel. On 29 April 2011, he presented the BBC coverage of the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. At its peak, the coverage was watched by 20 million viewers in the UK and the team won a BAFTA Award for Best Coverage of a Live Event. In June 2012, Edwards presented the BBC coverage of the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II. In May 2013, Edwards took over BBC coverage of local elections from David Dimbleby. He presented a special news report for the BBC following the death of Nelson Mandela in December 2013.
Edwards shared the BBC's 2015 general election coverage with Dimbleby, and contributed to the coverage of the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. In May 2018, he shared the presentation of the BBC coverage of the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. In 2019, he succeeded Dimbleby as the host of BBC election night coverage. and was the lead presenter for the 2019 general election coverage. In April 2021, he presented the rolling coverage across BBC One, BBC Two, BBC News Channel and BBC World News following the death and funeral of Prince Philip.
In August 2021, Edwards told BBC Radio Cymru he was contemplating his future, saying 20 years of news "can be taxing" and that viewers should "get a change". In January 2022, he joined BBC Radio Cymru as one of five regular presenters for the Sunday morning current affairs programme Bore Sul. On 8 September 2022, Edwards announced the death of Queen Elizabeth II, presenting rolling news coverage from around 14:00 BST following an announcement from Buckingham Palace earlier in the day. He presented the BBC's coverage of her state funeral on 19 September.
In September 2008, the BBC Trust ruled that a documentary on Welsh politics presented by Edwards, Wales: Power and the People – Back to the Future, had broken the BBC's editorial guidelines. The documentary covered the Welsh Assembly, with Edwards stating: "To achieve its full potential it needs even greater support for the people of Wales than it's received so far ... The more people that take part, the stronger and healthier our democracy in Wales will be." Following a complaint, the governing body concluded that Edwards's words were not objective and even-handed, saying: "It is not the role of BBC presenters to encourage audiences to exercise their right to vote on particular occasions." It was also found that the documentary as a whole was biased against the Conservative Party.
In 2010, Edwards presented The Prince and the Plotter about the investiture of the Prince of Wales and the part played by Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru ("Defence of Wales Movement"). He received the Best On-Screen Presenter award at the BAFTA Cymru Awards. In February 2012, Edwards launched a historical documentary series made by BBC Wales, The Story of Wales. That year, Edwards appeared as himself in the James Bond film Skyfall, presenting a BBC News report on a fictional attack on the British intelligence service MI6.
In 2015, Edwards presented a history of the Y Wladfa English and Welsh versionsto celebrate the 150th anniversary of the colony's establishment. In December 2018, he was a guest of Mary Berry in BBC One's Mary Berry's Christmas Party. In December 2022, he was the narrator for the BBC Four programme Organ Stops: Saving the King of Instruments.
In 2003, Edwards was made a Fellow of the University of Wales and in 2007 he became Honorary Professor of Journalism at Cardiff University. In 2005, he was appointed Patron of the National College of Music and in October 2008 he was appointed President of the London Welsh Trust which runs the London Welsh Centre. In April 2009 he was elected vice president, later Pro Chancellor, of Cardiff University for four years. He was honorary President of London's Gwalia Male Choir from 2005 to 2016, and was a vice president of the National Churches Trust until his removal from the position in 2024 after his sexual misconduct charges.
On 5 July 2019, Edwards was awarded a fellowship of the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. Edwards is also an amateur organist, taught to play at a chapel in Llanelli, and occasionally played at the Jewin Welsh Presbyterian Chapel in Clerkenwell, north London.
In 2020, Edwards criticised The Times for printing a story dismissive of the use of the Welsh language. He responded to comments in The Times written by the scientist Michael Pepper in which it was suggested that his late colleague John Meurig Thomas wrote notes in Welsh purely to stop others from reading them; Edwards said that Welsh speakers do not "use our native language in our daily lives simply to thwart others". In 2021, he criticised the former journalist Max Hastings for saying that Welsh was of "marginal value" and that Wales could not succeed as an independent country because it was "dependent on English largesse".
Edwards is a Christian who, as of 2013, attended Presbyterian Church of Wales services in Welsh. He led a campaign to save the historic Jewin Presbyterian Church, London's oldest Welsh chapel.
He said he has had bouts of clinical depression since 2002.
Shortly before Edwards was named, the Metropolitan Police reported that it had found no evidence of crime and would not investigate further. The Sun stated that it had never alleged criminality on the part of Edwards, which The Guardian described as backtracking. The Sun also said it would cooperate with the BBC's internal investigation and would not publish further allegations. Edwards was provided the results of the BBC's inquiry on or before November 2023 and was not reinstated. In January 2024, he was reported as too unwell to discuss his employment with the BBC. In April, he resigned from the BBC on "medical advice". After Edwards's criminal conviction in July 2024, the young person said he believed Edwards had Sexual grooming him.
Edwards was sent 377 sexual images, of which 41 were indecent images of children, by Alex Williams, a man from Merthyr Tydfil. On 15 March 2024, Williams received a 12-month suspended sentence after pleading guilty to possessing and distributing category A, B and C images. Edwards was arrested on 8 November 2023, and charged on 26 June 2024 following authorisation from the Crown Prosecution Service. He pleaded guilty to all of the charges at Westminster Magistrates' Court on 31 July.
Following Edwards's conviction, the BBC began removing his appearances from some of its archive footage. The Doctor Who episode "Fear Her", featuring his voice, was removed from BBC iPlayer, and his voice may be removed from the BBC's coverage of Elizabeth II's funeral and Charles III's coronation. A mural of Edwards in his hometown of Llangennech was painted over, and a plaque honouring him at Cardiff Castle was taken down. Mark Lawson wrote in The Guardian that Edwards's conviction would "rank as one of the greatest British public plunges from success and celebrity".
In August 2024, the BBC announced that it had asked Edwards to return more than £200,000 of the salary paid after his arrest in November 2023. The Chair of the BBC, Samir Shah, said Edwards had acted in bad faith by continuing to draw his salary. On 16 September 2024, Edwards was sentenced to six months in prison, suspended for two years, and placed on the sex offenders' register. He was also ordered to attend a sex offender treatment programme and pay £3,128 in costs and victim surcharge. Edwards' sentence was calculated by Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring based on an initial one year imprisonment. Three months were deducted for mental health reasons and due to Edwards having no previous convictions. A third of the sentence was also deducted due to Edwards' early guilty plea, bringing the sentence down to six months.
Edwards' defence barrister, Philip Evans, said that his client wished "to apologise to the court" and those he had hurt.
| 2003–2023 | BBC News at Ten | Presenter |
| BBC News at Six | ||
| BBC News at One | ||
| BBC Weekend News | ||
| BBC News channel | ||
| 2006 | Doctor Who | Commentator; Episode: "Fear Her" |
| 2011 | Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton | |
| 2012 | Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II | |
| 2015 | 2015 United Kingdom general election coverage | Co-presenter and later lead presenter |
| 2016 | 2016 European Union membership referendum coverage | Co-presenter of BBC coverage |
| 2018 | Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle | |
| 2019 | 2019 United Kingdom general election coverage | Co-presenter and later lead presenter |
| 2021 | Funeral of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh | Presenter of BBC coverage |
| 2022 | Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II | |
| Death and state funeral of Elizabeth II | Presenter of BBC coverage | |
| Wales: Who Do We Think We Are? with Huw Edwards | Presenter | |
| 2023 | Coronation of Charles III and Camilla | Presenter of BBC coverage |
| 2012 | Skyfall | Himself | Cameo |
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