Terry Waite was born in the county of Cheshire, England on the 31st May 1939. He was educated locally and received his higher education in London. On leaving college he was appointed as Education Advisor to the Anglican Bishop of Bristol, England and remained in that post until he moved to East Africa in 1969. In Uganda he worked as Provincial Training Adviser to the first African Anglican Archbishop of Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi and in that capacity traveled extensively throughout East Africa. Together with his wife Frances and their four children he witnessed the Amin coup in Uganda and both he and his wife narrowly escaped death on several occasions. From his office in Kampala he founded the Southern Sudan Project and was responsible for developing programmes of aid and development for this war-torn region.

In 1972 Waite responded to an invitation to work as an International Consultant to a Roman Catholic Medical Order and moved with his family to live in Rome, Italy. From this base he traveled extensively throughout Asia, Africa, North and South America and Europe both conducting and advising on programmes concerned with Institutional Change and Development, Inter-Cultural Relations, Group and Inter-group Dynamics and a broad range of development issues connected with both health and education.

In 1980 he was recruited by the Archbishop of Canterbury and moved to Lambeth Palace, London where he joined the Archbishop’s Private Staff. In his capacity as Advisor to the Archbishop, Waite again traveled extensively throughout the world and had a responsibility for the Archbishop’s diplomatic and ecclesiastical exchanges. He arranged and traveled with the Archbishop on the first ever visit of an Archbishop of Canterbury to China and has responsibility for travels to Australia, New Zealand, Burma, USA, Canada, The Caribbean, South Africa, East and West Africa to name but a few places.

In the early 1980s, Waite successfully negotiated the release of several hostages from Iran, attracting worldwide attention. In 1983 he negotiated with Colonel Ghadafi for the release of British hostages held in Libya and again was successful. In January 1987 while negotiating for the release of Western hostages in Lebanon, Waite himself was taken captive and remained in captivity for 1,763 days, the first four years of which were spent in total solitary confinement.

Following his release on 19th November 1991, Waite turned to writing, lecturing and humanitarian activities. While a Fellow Commoner at Trinity Hall Cambridge England, he wrote his first book Taken on Trust, which quickly became an international bestseller. His second book, Footfalls in Memory, is a collection of selections from books, poems and prayers, which Waite had read throughout his life and then remembered during his solitary confinement in Beirut. Published in 1995, it, too, became a bestseller. Travels with a Primate (a 2000 release), is a humorous account of his journeys with Archbishop Runcie. Waite also has contributed articles to journals and periodicals, ranging from the Reader’s Digest to the Kipling Journal, and has also contributed articles and forewords to many books. He is currently at work on two more books.

As Founder and President of Y Care International, the international relief and development agency of the YMCA in the UK and Ireland, Waite has worked in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East to empower street children and other disadvantaged young people to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty. (In India there are several Terry Waite Vocational Training Centres.) In 2005, Waite founded Hostage UK, a charity which provides support to families of those taken hostage from the UK and encourages research into post-release care and related issues.

Currently a fellow at Oxford, Waite maintains an ongoing interest in humanitarian and political affairs. Since his release, he has been in constant demand as a lecturer, writer and broadcaster and has appeared in North and South America, Australia and New Zealand, South Africa and throughout Europe. There has been a particular interest in the lectures he has delivered relating his experiences as a negotiator and as a hostage to the pressures faced by executives and managers. Stress, loneliness and negotiating under acute pressure are but some of the issues with which he has had personal experience, and his ability to communicate clearly and with good humour has meant that he is in constant demand as a speaker, to the business community, religious groups and to professionals in social work, education and healthcare.