Veteran journalist, writer and former BBC India correspondent Sir William Mark Tully KBE, was presented with the Tata Literature Live! Lifetime Achievement Award for 2018 on Friday, November 16, 2018, at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Mumbai. The Award recognises and salutes sustained and outstanding contribution to writing and literature in India.
The Tata Literature Live! Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Sir Mark Tully on Friday, November 16, 2018, at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Mumbai.
Founder & Festival Director, Anil Dharker said, “We are delighted to announce Sir Mark Tully as the recipient of this year’s Tata Literature Live! Lifetime Achievement Award. Sir Mark’s insightful work explaining and connecting India to the rest of the world made him one of the most internationally respected and riveting chroniclers of our times.”
On receiving news of the Award, Sir Mark said, “The poet John Donne said ‘No man is an island’. No winner of a lifetime award should ever forget that. I remember how much I owe to others, to what I have been given by God, to sheer good luck, and of course to India. It is here that I have established myself by having the unique good fortune to broadcast to Indians almost daily in the days when radio was king. So I see this award as given not just to me but also to the BBC and for all those journalists in India and back in BBC headquarters who I relied on. I am proud that between us we won the confidence of millions of Indians. Since my BBC days I have taken to writing books. I hope they too do justice to India”.
Harish Bhat, Brand Custodian, Tata Sons said, “It is a privilege to present the Tata Literature Live! Lifetime Achievement Award to Sir Mark Tully this year, commemorating his active and diverse contribution to literature, as well as his long and distinguished association with Indian journalism. We are looking forward greatly to hearing him at the festival.”
Mark Tully was born in Kolkata in 1935 and educated in India and England. He joined the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1964 and moved to India as the BBC’s India correspondent the following year. He covered all the major events in South Asia for thirty years, until he resigned from the BBC in 1994. Since then he has been a freelance journalist and broadcaster based in New Delhi. Sir Mark has published several books on India, including the well-received ‘No Full Stops in India’. He is a recipient of the Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan and British Academy Television Richard Dimbleby awards, and was knighted and received a KBE in 2002.
Past recipients of the Tata Literature Live! Lifetime Achievement Award include Sir V S Naipaul, Girish Karnad, Amitav Ghosh and Mahashweta Devi.