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 political battles over just how the United Kingdom will leave the European Union. Langfitt also frequently appears on the BBC, where he tries to explain American politics, which is not easy.
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 has expanded his reporting into a book, The Shanghai Free Taxi: Journeys with the Hustlers and Rebels of the New China (Public Affairs, Hachette), which is out in June 2019.
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 reform movement in Bahrain.
Prior to Africa, Langfitt was NPR's labor correspondent based in Washington, DC. He covered the 2008 financial crisis, the bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler, and coal mine disasters in West Virginia.
In 2008, Langfitt also 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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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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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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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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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.
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The ruling by the Supreme Court's 11 judges was unanimous. Parliament has not in fact been suspended, according to the decision.
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In a dramatic day, a defection robbed Johnson's ruling Conservative Party of its single-seat majority in Parliament and lawmakers set the way to vote to prevent the U.K. from a no-deal Brexit.
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NPR's Frank Langfitt reflects on a decade as a journalist in China and how he bypassed reporting restrictions by offering people free rides. It's the subject of his new memoir, The Shanghai Free Taxi.
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Britain's prime minister vows to bring the country out of the European Union at the end of October — deal or no deal. Here are some of the key challenges he faces.
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A government source told the Sunday Times, which obtained the document, that "this is the most realistic assessment of what the public face with no deal."
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New Prime Minister Boris Johnson thinks he has a plan to force the United Kingdom to leave the European Union at the end of October — whether Parliament likes it or not.