We are delighted to announce that British playwright, screenwriter and television writer Jack Thorne has been elected as the WGGB’s new President.
The announcement has been made today (12 September 2025) at our AGM, held online. Thorne, known for Adolescence, His Dark Materials, Help, This Is England ’90 and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, steps into the role vacated by Sandi Toksvig OBE who has come to the end of the maximum term she can serve under WGGB rules.
He joins a long line of WGGB Presidents, which include Olivia Hetreed, David Edgar, JB Priestley, Maureen Duffy, David Nobbs and Rosemary Anne Sisson.
Jack Thorne said: “This is such a huge honour for me. I think the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain is a union to be hugely proud of. I was proud of it from the outside and I’m delighted to now fight for it from the inside. And I do think we’re about to be in the battle of our lives. The landscape for writers is brutal right now, and the conservatism that has crept in to commissioning is vital to combat. But more than all that, there are people coming after our copyright, vultures who’d steal it to put into their machines and we need to make sure the government is robust in defending us. As a kid I went on marches with my parents where we’d chant ‘together, united, we’ll never be defeated’ and I do think these next few years are going to be about us all working together to fight.
“The titan Sandi Toksvig has been an incredible champion: I’m a size 13 and would have no hope of following in her footsteps but I will do my very best. With Emma Reeves as our Chair – a fellow working writer, passionate about these issues – we stand every chance, and I will do all to support her and all our activist members to win the clash that’s ahead of us.”
Outgoing WGGB President Sandi Toksvig OBE said: “During my six years as President we’ve seen a global pandemic, the rise of AI, the fall-out from Brexit, a cost-of-living crisis, the disturbing re-emergence of the far right, and brutal cuts to the arts. From deep in the trenches, I’ve been proud to witness my union rise to these challenges and fight at every turn to protect writers’ jobs, rights and livelihoods.
“As I hang up my President’s hat, I would like to pay tribute to every activist who I’ve been proud to walk alongside, and to all who sail the good ship WGGB. Unions are precious and more important than they have ever been; we must hold on to them tight. It’s been a privilege to serve, and I wish my successor Jack Thorne the very best – I know he’ll make a huge success of it.”
About Jack Thorne
Thorne is one of Britain’s most celebrated writers and known for his powerful, socially resonant screenwriting. Over the course of his career, he has written extensively for TV, film, stage and radio, winning multiple awards.
Thorne began writing for television in the late 2000s, with early credits on E4’s Skins and Channel 4’s Shameless. His collaboration with Shane Meadows on the This Is England trilogy (’86, ’88, ’90) earned him widespread critical acclaim and multiple awards. His screen work spans genres and mediums, including the BBC/HBO adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and the groundbreaking BBC film Then Barbara Met Alan, which featured exclusively disabled talent. Further TV writing credits include Help, Toxic Town, National Treasure, The Virtues, Kiri, The Last Panthers, Glue, The Accident, The Eddy, The Fades, Shameless and Cast Offs. In 2025, Thorne’s Netflix mini-series Adolescence became a global juggernaut, topping streaming charts and sparking international conversation; acclaimed for its unflinching honesty, emotional depth, and compassionate portrayal of youth in modern Britain, it cemented his reputation as one of the UK’s most influential and socially resonant storytellers.
In film, Thorne has written the Enola Holmes series, The Scouting Book for Boys, The Aeronauts, Radioactive, The Secret Garden, A Long Way Down, Wonder, War Book, The Swimmers, and Joy (co-written with his wife Rachel Mason).
Thorne has also written extensively for stage, where his credits include After Life, an adaptation of a film by Hirokazu Kore-eda for the National Theatre; the end of history… for the Royal Court; an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Büchner’s Woyzeck, both for the Old Vic; as well as Headlong’s Junkyard, a co-production with Bristol Old Vic, Rose Theatre Kingston and Theatr Clwyd; and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Palace Theatre and globally), which premiered in 2016 to global acclaim, establishing him as a major playwright.
His radio plays include Left at the Angel and an adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, both for BBC Radio 4, and People Snogging in Public Places for BBC Radio 3’s Wire slot.
In recognition of his contribution to the arts, he has been honoured with multiple BAFTAs, Olivier Awards and an International Emmy Award, the Royal Television Society’s Outstanding Contribution to British Television Award (2022) and was previously honoured by the WGGB for his work, receiving the union’s Outstanding Contribution to Writing award in 2022. He is currently nominated for a Primetime Emmy (in the Outstanding Writing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie category) for Adolescence, with the ceremony taking place this Sunday (14 September 2025) in Los Angeles.
Forthcoming projects include an adaptation of Lord of the Flies.
A passionate advocate for equality, diversity and inclusion, in 2021, following Thorne’s seminal MacTaggart Lecture, he co-founded Underlying Health Condition, a collective movement for change, campaigning to improve representation and access for disabled people in the TV industry, which led to the launch of the TV Access Project. He is also a patron of Graeae, and for many years has been involved with the theatre company, which creates radical theatre and places access at the heart of its work. A long-standing member of the WGGB, Thorne has been a passionate supporter of the union’s ongoing work in this area.
Sandi Toksvig’s Presidency
Toksvig has served six years as WGGB President, a period that has seen a number of significant union wins, including a landmark deal with Netflix – the first agreement with a global streamer for TV writers in the UK. Post-Covid, WGGB launched the New Play Commission Scheme, to tackle the decline in the commissioning of new stage plays which followed the pandemic. To address the explosion of digital streaming of stage plays that emerged during lockdown, WGGB also negotiated a series of digital deals to protect playwrights. This period has also seen union campaigns to save Channel 4 from privatisation, to Save Audio Drama at the BBC, to tackle the predatory practices in the ‘paid-for’ publishing world, and against cuts to continuing drama, including Doctors, Holby, Emmerdale, Coronation Street and River City. More recently WGGB has engaged in sustained campaigning and lobbying work around copyright and artificial intelligence.