Current position
Andy owns an industrial metal market analyst firm in London

  Journey of a Lifetime Award - Land of Black Snow
In 2003 Andy Home and Grigori Gerenstein traveled to Norilsk in Siberia, a mining city of around 200,000 inhabitants. Norilsk is a major source of industrial metals. It is one of Russia's most polluted cities.

Established in the 1930s, the city was a prison camp until the 1950s. It was then a "secret" city, closed to all outsiders. Only with "glastnost" did Norilsk open to the outside world. It closed to all outsiders in 2002, having been bought by a Russian oligarch.

Andy's trip was a visit to somewhere he had often written about as a reporter. Grigori, a Russian who had twice left his country, wanted to re-assess his skeptical views of Russia.

The trip was spent in Moscow - in pursuit of elusive visas to visit Norilsk - and Norilsk. Andy and Grigori interviewed several "Norilsk-dwellers" in their homes, and descended deep underground into metal mines.

They also paid a rare visit to a metallurgical plants. Amid tensions with authorities, they met some of the key men in charge of this pocket of humanity in the frozen tundra.

  Since the Journey of a Lifetime Award
Grigori was so impressed with changes that had taken place in Russia, he returned to live in Moscow, working as a news correspondent and media consultant.

Andy wrote a book, Siberian Dreams, published in late 2006 by Eye Books. If a Russian edition is published, Grigori will be edit and translate it.

  Listen to Andy's Journey of a Lifetime BBC Radio 4 show