Tom Holland, Mary Hockaday, and Richard Blakeway have all been appointed by the Secretary of State to serve four-year terms on the British Library Board.
Richard Blakeway
Appointed from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2026
Since 2019, Richard has served as the Housing Ombudsman. The service promotes positive change in the housing industry by offering free, impartial, and independent dispute resolution between tenants and member landlords. He serves as the Ombudsman Association’s chairman.
Richard has a wealth of experience in the housing and regeneration industries, having previously held the positions of Deputy Mayor of London for Housing, Land, and Property, member of the board of Homes England, and chair of the Chartered Institute of Housing. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and has served as an election observer in Somaliland and Ukraine.
Mary Hockaday
Appointed from September 1, 2022, to August 31, 2026.
Mary is the Cambridge’s Trinity Hall’s Master-Elect/Master. After a lengthy career in news, she left the BBC. She oversaw more than forty language services as Director of BBC World Service in 2021. She oversaw the BBC’s radio and digital audio services in English for audiences around the world for a number of years, building the audience and creating a wide variety of award-winning programs and podcasts. Her previous position was Head of the BBC Newsroom, where she was responsible for leading the BBC’s daily television, radio, and website newscasts. She held a number of other positions at the BBC.
She was a BBC and The Independent correspondent in Prague in the early 1990s, and she is the author of Kafka, Love, and Courage, a biography of Milena Jesenska. On a Fulbright Scholarship, she studied English at Cambridge and then Journalism at New York University.
Mary is a Lay Trustee of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, an independent NED of the ICAEW, and a Board Member of Climate Alliance, a small social enterprise.
Tom Holland
Appointed from November 1, 2022, to October 31, 2026
Tom Holland is a broadcaster and historian. His area of expertise is early medieval and ancient history. Dominion, his most recent book, chronicled how Christianity’s impact on the world changed over time, from antiquity to the present. He is the host of the podcast The Rest Is History and has produced documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4. He has held the position of chair for the PLR Advisory Committee and the Society of Authors. According to The Times, he is “a leading English cricketer.”
Board members of the British Library are paid £9130 annually. The Cabinet Office’s Governance Code on Public Appointments has been followed in making these appointments.
The Commissioner for Public Appointments oversees the appointment process. Any significant political activity undertaken by an appointee in the previous five years must be declared under the Code.
This includes holding office, public speaking, making a recordable donation, and running for office. No activity has been declared by Richard Blakeway, Mary Hockaday, and Tom Holland.