James moran biography

European Union Ambassador to Egypt

James Moran is a diplomat and economist, specialising in Middle-Eastern and Asian affairs. He was the European Union's Ambassador to Egypt from 2012 to 2016.

Biography

Moran attended Keele University (where he was president of the students' union), Harvard University and the University of London. He subsequently worked in the private sector and the UK government before joining the European Union's staff in 1983. His early assignments in the EU included working in its delegations to Jamaica and Ethiopia. From 1999 to 2002, he led EU delegations in Jordan and Yemen. Returning to Brussels in 2002, he headed the European Commission's China division before being appointed Asia Director in 2006.

Moving to the new EU external action service, Moran continued as Asia Director from 2006 to 2011 where he negotiated a number of EU partnership agreements. He then became the Union's senior coordinator in Libya in 2011, where he established the EU delegation in Tripoli following the revolution, and helped launch the first European assistance programmes there.

Personal life

He and his wife Randa have four children, including British Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament Layla Moran.

References

External links

British screenwriter

For other people named James Moran, see James Moran (disambiguation).

James Moran (born 5 March 1972) is a British screenwriter for television and film, who wrote the horror-comedySeverance. He works in the horror, comedy, science-fiction, historical fiction and spy thriller genres.

Early career

Born in York, Moran's first produced work came as the result of a competition run by the Sci Fi Channel. The competition asked for writers to submit short science-fiction themed film scripts. Moran won, and his entry Cheap Rate Gravity was produced and shown both on the sci-fi channel and in front of full-length movies, including Final Destination 2.

Moran secured an agent at the PFD Literary Agency from the strength of the competition win, a spec film script, and a six-part TV drama entitled The School. He wrote the entire run of The School on spec, later saying he was unaware that generally only a pilot is written until a production company shows interest. Moran claims the series is still his favourite of his own works.

Film work

Moran scripted the 2005 film Severance, which concerns office workers on a team building trip being stalked by a masked killer. Talking about where the idea for Severance came from, Moran said "I'd been trying to think of a good horror idea, and one day had a really bad commute home – yuppies in pinstripe suits were everywhere, pushing past me, jumping the queue, and generally being the ignorant scumbags that they are. So, in a flash of temper, I decided to kill off some yuppies in a horror – take them to a cabin, and pick them off one by one. Once I'd calmed down, I thought that was a pretty good idea – take some standard, British office types, and throw them into a cabin-in-the-woods horror, see how they react. And it developed from there."

In April 2009, the BBC reported that the murder of a 17-year-old student from Norfolk was a re-enactmen

Born: 5th March 1972
Episodes Broadcast: 2008-2009

York-born James Moran entered the writing profession when he won a 2002 short scripts competition organised by the Sci Fi Channel. He then developed the 2006 horror-comedy film Severance. Attracting the notice of the Doctor Who production office, Moran was given the opportunity to write a script for the second season of the spin-off series Torchwood. The result was 2008's Sleeper, and its success prompted executive producer Russell T Davies to assign Moran a key story for Doctor Who's 2008 season. This was The Fires Of Pompeii, an adventure for David Tennant's Tenth Doctor which boasted filming at the historic Cinecittà Studios in Italy. Moran subsequently co-wrote an episode of Children Of Earth, the gripping season-long story which comprised Torchwood's third year. Around the same time, he wrote several Doctor Who and Torchwood short stories, including for the Short Trips range from Big Finish Productions, the Consequences anthology from BBC Books, and both the 2009 and 2010 editions of the Doctor Who Storybook from Panini Publishing.

Away from the worlds of Doctor Who, Moran contributed to programmes such as Crusoe, Spooks and Primeval. During the 2010s, short film became a key focus for him, with Moran not only writing several pieces but also producing and directing them. He did not abandon long-form storytelling altogether, however: feature film screenplays included 2012's Cockneys Vs Zombies with Michelle Ryan and Tower Block with Sheridan Smith, while amongst his television credits were episodes of The Sparticle Mystery, Crossing Lines and Eve. In 2017, Moran married writer-director Cat Davies, with whom he formed Moranic Productions. He resumed his association with the various Doctor Who strands from Big Finish, starting with the 2019 Torchwood audio drama Serenity. Moran's novelisation of The Fires Of Pompeii was published by