Patrick Cockburn is a Middle East correspondent for the Independent and has worked previously for the Financial Times. His work on the crisis in the Middle East include the National Book Circle Awards- shortlisted The Occupation and Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession (with Andrew Cockburn), The best-selling The Rise of the Islamic State and The Age of Jihad. He won the Martha Gellhorn Prize in 2005, the James Cameron Prize in 2006, and the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2009. More recently he has been awarded Foreign Commentator of the Year at the 2013 Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards, Foreign Affairs Journalist of the Year in British Journalism Award 2014, and Foreign Reporter of the Year in Press Awards 2014.