Ben Hills
Ben Hills is one of sixty authors who attended The Press Christchurch Writers Festival from 4 to 7 September 2008.
As a multiple-award-winning Australian investigative journalist, Ben Hills’ career highlights are many and varied.
He's had stints at leading Australian newspapers and television programmes (60 Minutes, for example), and been a foreign correspondent in more than 60 countries, including covering civil wars from the Sahara to Northern Ireland.
For the last couple of decades, he’s turned his investigative talents to exposing business and political corruption, including banking and the asbestos industry.
Published works
Author of several books, he now spends a lot of time writing about restaurants and travelling, although sampling some of the dishes he writes about would be a real experience. Pass the Hedgehog, anyone?
His earlier books include Blue murder, an account of the battle for justice by victims of an asbestos mine in Western Australia, and the international bestseller, Princess Masako, prisoner of the Chrysanthemum throne, the tragic true story of Japan’s Crown Princess. Ben’s fourth book is The island of the ancients, which asks why the inhabitants of the Mediterranean island of Sardinia are two or three times as likely as any other people on earth to reach the age of 100.
