Frank Langfitt
Frank Langfitt is NPR's London correspondent. He covers the UK and Ireland, as well as stories elsewhere in Europe.
Langfitt arrived in London in June 2016. A week later, the UK voted for Brexit. He's been busy ever since, covering the most tumultuous period in British politics in decades. Langfitt has reported on everything from Brexit's economic impact, Chinese influence campaigns and terror attacks to the renewed push for Scottish independence, political tensions in Northern Ireland and Megxit. Langfitt has contributed to NPR podcasts, including Consider This, The Indicator from Planet Money, Code Switch and Pop Culture Happy Hour. He also appears on the BBC and PBS Newshour.
Previously, Langfitt spent five years as an NPR correspondent covering China. Based in Shanghai, he drove a free taxi around the city for a series on a changing China as seen through the eyes of ordinary people. As part of the series, Langfitt drove passengers back to the countryside for Chinese New Year and served as a wedding chauffeur. He expanded his reporting into a book, The Shanghai Free Taxi: Journeys with the Hustlers and Rebels of the New China (Public Affairs, Hachette).
While in China, Langfitt also reported on the government's infamous "black jails" — secret detention centers — as well as his own travails taking China's driver's test, which he failed three times.
Before moving to Shanghai, Langfitt was NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi. He reported from Sudan, covered the civil war in Somalia, and interviewed imprisoned Somali pirates, who insisted they were just misunderstood fishermen. During the Arab Spring, Langfitt covered the uprising and crushing of the democracy movement in Bahrain.
Prior to Africa, Langfitt was NPR's labor correspondent based in Washington, DC. He covered coal mine disasters in West Virginia, the 2008 financial crisis and the bankruptcy of General Motors. His story with producer Brian Reed of how GM failed to learn from a joint-venture factory with Toyota was featured on This American Life and has been taught in business schools at Yale, Penn and NYU.
In 2008, Langfitt covered the Beijing Olympics as a member of NPR's team, which won an Edward R. Murrow Award for sports reporting. Langfitt's print and visual journalism have also been honored by the Overseas Press Association and the White House News Photographers Association.
Before coming to NPR, Langfitt spent five years as a correspondent in Beijing for The Baltimore Sun, covering a swath of Asia from East Timor to the Khyber Pass.
Langfitt spent his early years in journalism stringing for the Philadelphia Inquirer and living in Hazard, Kentucky, where he covered the state's Appalachian coalfields for the Lexington Herald-Leader. Prior to becoming a reporter, Langfitt dug latrines in Mexico and drove a taxi in his hometown of Philadelphia. Langfitt is a graduate of Princeton and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.
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London suffered another deadly terror attack Friday. The attacker was a home-grown Islamist terrorist. Normal people, armed with whatever they could find, took down the attacker until police arrived.
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Simon Cheng, a former U.K. Consulate worker, says he was tortured in mainland China in a series of interviews. He says Chinese authorities falsely suspected him of spying for the U.K. in Hong Kong.
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Britain's Prince Andrew has been criticized for his answers in interview with the BBC in which he tried to explain his involvement with the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
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John Bercow, the former speaker of Britain's House of Commons, might have stepped down last week, but his foghorn voice and rhetorical acrobatics have inspired a Belgian dance track.
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British police have launched a murder investigation after 39 bodies were discovered in a truck in an apparent human smuggling operation.
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The 2016 referendum on Britain's membership of the EU left many communities deeply divided, but one organization is trying to bridge the gap between "Brexiteers" and "Remainers."
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It looks like a big breakthrough in Britain's long process to leave the European Union, but the saga doesn't end here.
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Officials from Britain and the European Union have an agreement on how the U.K. could leave the E.U. this month, but the deal must still be ratified by the British parliament.
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The European Union has announced that it has reached the outline of a deal with the United Kingdom on Brexit.
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British and European Union negotiators in Brussels appeared to be closing in on a draft Brexit deal as the deadline for the U.K. to leave the EU approaches. Hope for a deal has since faded.
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Context, analysis and reaction to former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron's interview.
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The U.K.'s Supreme Court Ruled against Boris Johnson. The court said it was illegal when he suspended Parliament five weeks ago, in what was seen as an effort to limit debate on Brexit.