Caffè Florian in Venice. The oldest cafe in the world, serving the thirsty people of Venice since 1720, is a fine place to contemplate the intriguing business of travel
Mal Rogers is an award-winning journalist, travel writer and columnist from County Down. He was brought up in Tollymore Forest — as it happens, the film set for a substantial part of Game of Thrones.
At an early age Mal wanted to join the university of life, but after careful consideration headed north instead, to enrol at the Queen’s University of Belfast.
His quest was to study botany, but this was at the height of the Troubles in Ulster, with civil strife and sectarian violence an everyday occurrence. So alongside learning the intricacies of photosynthesis and transpiration, Mal began to report for national newspapers on any riots or gunfights happening locally.
Mal on the fiddle — this instrument has been to at least fifty countries. It probably originally came from Germany, mid 19th century; there's no knowing what it was up to before then
From these beginnings, his journalistic career flourished — while, sadly, his march to the top of the botanical tree faltered. Mal did, however, leave university with a BSc (pass degree, naturally), a load of journalistic contacts, and a love for Irish music. He still plays fiddle, mandolin and uilleann pipes. He reckons he might get a 2.1 in fiddling; a lesser grade in piping.
Mal’s journalistic career has flourished, however. He writes for publications as diverse as The Daily Mail, BBC Wildlife, the Aer Lingus inflight magazine Cara and The Irish Times.
In 2016, he won the Northern Ireland Travel Writer of the Year Award.
In 2014 Mal won the Irish Travel Writer of the Year Spain Award, a prize he also won in 2013. This was for articles on Spain in The Irish Post, The Irish Times, Cara and the Belfast Telegraph.
For travel articles in The Irish Times, he won the Northern Ireland Travel Writer of the Year Award (2010), the Irish Travel Writer of the Year Award in the skiing section (2009), the Irish Travel Writer of the Year Award for long distance travel (2008).
Also in 2009 Mal was nominated as one of the top 50 travel writers in the UK by the Press Gazette, while the previous year his Guide to Northern Ireland (Crimson Press) won the Guide Book of the Year Award from the British Guild of Travel Writers.
In 2004 he won the Swedish Travel Writer of the Year Award – and just to complete the bragging, in 2008 and 2009 he won the competition to write the main market book for Tourism Ireland. He continues to work for the body.
Mal was editor of The Irish Post, the London-based newspaper which serves the Irish community in Britain, until the end of 2011, when he relinquished the position to concentrate on travel writing. In 2022 Mal returned as editor to The Irish Post, a position he currently retains.
He continues to write a column for the paper.
Telephone: 00 44 7400 560 986.
email: malrgrs@googlemail.com
Home territory — the Mountains of Mourne doing their party piece of sweeping down to the sea