Malcolm Dean was a former Guardian journalist. He joined in 1969 and was a reporter, social affairs leader-writer and assistant editor. In 1979 he launched its Society section and edited it for most of its first 21 years. In 2006, he retired and took up a fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford, where he was an associate. He was author of Democracy under Attack (Policy Press).

He was a special adviser to the secretary of state for health and social security in the last year of the 1974-79 Labour government, served on more than a dozen national social policy working parties, chaired a Joseph Rowntree Foundation commission on older people, and was a trustee of six charities. He was a founding trustee of the Young Foundation.