Mark Lee Urban (born 26 January 1961)
Education and early career
Urban's father came from
Poland.
Correspondent career
Urban joined the BBC in 1983 as an assistant producer, working on several BBC news programmes. From 1986 to 1990 he was the defence correspondent of
The Independent, before rejoining the BBC as a general reporter on
Newsnight. From 1993 to 1994 he was Middle East correspondent for
BBC News, before becoming
Newsnights diplomatic editor, a role he has held since 1995.
[BBC News 2. Mark Urban bio. BBC Two. Retrieved 13 February 2010.][ Mark Urban , Debrett's People of Today]
In his years on Newsnight, he has reported on the Gulf War, the Bosnian War, War in Kosovo, the War in Afghanistan and War in Iraq.[ Mark Urban on Newsnight's coverage of peace and war, 2 February 2005.]
After the 2018 Amesbury poisonings Urban reported that he had been working with Sergei Skripal up to a year before the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury.[Mark Urban: Salisbury poisoning: Skripals 'were under Russian surveillance, BBC, 4 July 2018]
Military historian
In 1992, Urban published
Big Boys' Rules: The SAS and the secret struggle against the IRA on killings by British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary undercover units in
The Troubles between 1976 and 1987.
The book, which was subject to censorship by the D-Notice Committee, was described by
John Stalker as "deep and meticulous delving into a secret war".
In 2010, he published Task Force Black: The Explosive True Story of the SAS and the Secret War in Iraq, described as a "ground-breaking investigation" and which required months of negotiations with the Ministry of Defence, which had tried to prevent publication.
Books
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Soviet Land Power (1985)
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War in Afghanistan (1987)
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Big Boys' Rules: The SAS and the secret struggle against the IRA (1992)
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UK Eyes Alpha: Inside British Intelligence (1996)
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The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes: The Story of George Scovell (2001)
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Rifles: Six Years with Wellington's Legendary Sharpshooters (2003)
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Generals: Ten British Commanders Who Shaped the World (2005)
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Fusiliers: Eight Years with the Redcoats in America (2007)
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Task Force Black: The Explosive True Story of the Secret Special Forces War in Iraq (2011)
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The Tank War: The British Band of Brothers – One Tank Regiment's World War II (2014)
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The Edge: Is The Military Dominance Of The West Coming To An End? (2015)
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The Skripal Files: The Life and Near Death of a Russian Spy (2018)
External links
