Simon Calder

Over the years Simon has travelled to more than 120 countries and lists Northern Ireland, Yorkshire and Hadrian’s Wall, Northumberland among his favourite places to visit.

He continues to contribute to various BBC programmes, including The Travel Show and Rip Off Britain as a presenter of short films and as an expert providing advice to consumers. He regularly comments as an expert on travel issues for other radio and TV stations. Calder presented The Travel Show, a weekly travel phone-in on the London talk radio station LBC, for four years until April 2012.

In 2012 Simon won the Outstanding Achievement and Broadcast Journalist of the Year at the 2012 Travel Press Awards and also the News Journalist of the Year for Print at the 2012 Business Travel Journalism Awards.

In 2011, Calder wrote an article for the Independent entitled "A new age of the train is dawning across Europe" about how competition on the railways was improving service across Europe. Calder's articles have featured in Condé Nast Traveller, The Evening Standard, High Life (BA’s inflight magazine), and the trade publication, Travel Trade Gazette.

Calder won the 2011 Christmas edition of Celebrity Mastermind, with Concorde as his specialist subject.

Simon married Charlotte in Las Vegas in 1997. He has two daughters (born in 2000 and 2003) and lives in London.

Calder became travel editor for The Independent in 1994 and shortly afterwards began presenting for BBC 2's Travel Show until the programme ended in 1999. He then contributed to several BBC 1 shows, including Perfect Holiday and Departure Lounge. Calder presented the final film in the last edition of the long-running Holiday programme in 2007.

In 1986, Calder flew his first and only flight on Concorde. In 2006, Calder travelled more than 5700 miles by rail across Russia from Moscow in the west to Vladivostok in the east, on the Trans-Siberian Railway.

After university, Simon briefly taught Maths in Crawley before landing a job as a radio engineer with the BBC in London. Calder wrote several books and series of guides including the Traveller's Survival Kit series and Backpacks, Boots and Baguettes. His first broadcast as a travel expert was on Simon Bates programme Studio B15 on BBC Radio 1 in 1980.

In 1962, Calder joined the Woodcraft Folk and travelled with the group to the Lake District. That same year, after the USSR sent nuclear warheads to Cuba, Calder's parents decided that with Gatwick Airport only two miles away they were in the line of a potential Soviet target. The family moved to Guernsey, for a short holiday while the danger passed. The school he attended, Thomas Bennett in Crawley, compulsorily taught Russian, which Calder comments was not useful on regular school and family trips to France.

Simon Calder (born 25 December 1955) is an English travel writer and broadcaster, currently senior travel editor for The Independent newspaper.

Calder is the son of science writer Nigel Calder and the grandson of Lord Ritchie-Calder. He is the nephew of Scottish writer and critic, Angus Calder and educationalist Isla Calder (1946-2000).