Maxine Mawhinney

Biography

Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, she trained as a newspaper journalist in Northern Ireland, then joined BBC Television and Radio in Belfast, before moving to Ulster Television and then ITN in London.

She joined Sky News at its launch in 1988, as Ireland correspondent, remaining for two years before going to Tokyo as News Editor for Asia for Reuters Television.

After two years in Asia, she spent a year in Frankfurt, Germany, for Reuters Television, before being appointed Washington Correspondent for GMTV at its launch in 1992.

In 1996 she returned to London joining the BBC's international news channel BBC World. She was the duty presenter in the early hours of 31 August 1997 when news broke of the fatal car crash of Diana, Princess of Wales. She can be seen in this role in the 2006 feature film The Queen.

In November 1997 she joined BBC News (then BBC News 24) as one of the launch presenters. She presented in various timeslots on the channel, including a period in the afternoon slot alongside Matthew Amroliwala and Chris Eakin, before being assigned to Sunday afternoons in April 2006. She took on the Saturday and Monday morning slots and the Friday afternoon slot, as well as regularly covering other shifts on the channel.

Mawhinney also presented BBC Breakfast and the BBC One O'Clock News. Later she appeared on the BBC News at One weekend lunchtime bulletins as part of her weekend shifts.

Mawhinney is married with two daughters. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in November 2013. She underwent surgery, drug therapy and radiotherapy and was back in the studio in March 2014.

On 10 April 2017, Mawhinney presented her last BBC News channel shift.