Brendan Montague is the founder and director of the Request Initiative. Request is a non-profit community interest company that makes Freedom of Information and Environmental Information Regulation requests on behalf of charities, NGOs and social enterprises as well as conducting its own public interest journalism and research.

Brendan also works as a freelance journalist. Over the past decade he has filed copy from Iraq, Gaza and the deepest recesses of Zakynthos. Brendan has worked on national foreign and home news desks and as education and government correspondent for regional dailies.

Brendan specialises in finding the human stories which talk to the wider issues touching people's lives, from health provision to the global economy. Brendan can find a headline and a fact-rich feature which illustrates the great issues of the day, whether skipping through the dust kicked up in the theatre of war or dusting off historic archives about Britain's leaders.

He has filed to the the Sunday Times, the Observer, the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Mail during his career in Fleet Street. Story suggestions, leads and whistleblowing always welcome via email at brendan@requestinitiative.org