Frank Gardner is the UK’s first full-time Security Correspondent, reporting on issues of both domestic and international security, including everything from Afghanistan to piracy off the Somali coast to Arctic challenges.

He spent nine years as an investment banker before switching to journalism in 1995. A fluent Arabic speaker, he became the BBC’s first full-time Gulf correspondent in 1998, setting up an office in Dubai. In 2000, he became BBC Middle East correspondent in charge of the bureau in Cairo. After 9/11, he turned his focus almost exclusively to covering the War on Terror.

In 2004, Frank was shot six times in an opportunistic attack by al-Qaeda gunmen while filming in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. His cameraman was killed, but Frank survived with major injuries, returning to his BBC job after 14 operations. In 2005, he was awarded the OBE for services to journalism. His bestselling book, Blood And Sand, describing his 25 years of Middle Eastern experiences, was published in 2006. In 2010, he published Far Horizons, also a bestseller, which describes his many unusual journeys to unusual places.