Hall, Tony, 1951-

Anthony William Hall, Baron Hall of Birkenhead (born 3 March 1951) is a British life peer. He was Director-General of the BBC between April 2013 and August 2020, and chaired the board of trustees of the National Gallery from September 2020 to May 2021. Hall was Director of News at the BBC between 1993 and 2001, and Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London from 2001 until March 2013. He was made a life peer and took his seat in the House of Lords as a crossbench member on 22 March 2010. He took up the post of Director-General of the BBC on 2 April 2013, and stepped down as Director-General on 31 August 2020, replaced by Tim Davie. An inquiry in 2021 found that Hall, when Director of News at the BBC, had carried out an inadequate investigation into the methods used by Martin Bashir for the BBC's Panorama interview with Diana, Princess of Wales. He resigned as chairman of the National Gallery on 22 May 2021. Since he left the BBC, Hall has joined the Board of the National Trust and was elected to the Communications and Digital Committee of the House of Lords. In December 2023, the Woodland Trust, the UK's largest woodland conservation charity, announced the appointment of Hall as the charity’s new Chair. He took up the role in June 2024 when the then Chair, Barbara Young, Baroness Young of Old Scone, stepped down after eight years as Chair. It was announced in July 2024 that Hall would succeed Sir Patrick Vallance as non-executive Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Natural History Museum, having originally been appointed to the Natural History Museum Board of Trustees by the Prime Minister in November 2023 .