Russell studied history at
St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and went on to become a BBC News trainee. She worked for the BBC, as well as
ITN and
Channel 4 News. In 1998 she became joint editor of
BBC Radio 4's
The World Tonight. On leaving the BBC, Russell began writing comment pieces for
The Guardian and the
New Statesman, before beginning to write regularly for
The Sunday Times, for whom she also reviews books. She has been a vocal critic of the failings of the education system and criticised the increasing abuse of civil liberties under the last Labour government. In May 2011, she won the
Orwell Prize for Political Journalism, having been shortlisted for the Commentariat of the Year at the 2010 Comment Awards. She was described as "the stand-out journalist in an outstanding field". She wrote the Monday political column for the
London Evening Standard for two years, from 2011 to 2013, and was shortlisted for the inaugural
Hatchet Job of the Year Award in 2012 for her work on as a book reviewer in
The Sunday Times. In 2013, she became a member of the independent expert panel advising the government on the initiation and publication of
Serious Case Reviews, and in August that year began writing a column on Thursdays for
The Times. At the 2015 Comment Awards she was named Society & Diversity Commentator of the Year. In 2017, Russell started writing for the
New York Times as a contributing opinion writer. In 2020, she was long-listed for the Orwell Prize. Russell regularly appears on television and radio, including on the
BBC's
Newsnight and on
Sky News. ==References==