Jim Murray started his career working as a national newspaper journalist with the Sunday People and Daily Star, and his first book was a history of Millwall Football Club: Millwall: Lions of the South (1988). Murray made the decision to leave Fleet Street after 13 years to become a full-time whisky writer, releasing Jim Murray's Irish Whiskey Almanac in 1994 which he followed with other publications such as Jim Murray's Complete Book of Whisky (1997), Classic Bourbon, Tennessee & Rye (1998), and Classic Blended Scotch (1999).
His most famous work is Jim Murray's Whisky Bible, an ongoing series that began in 2003. Styled as a compact guide, it’s a comprehensive index of every whisky that Murray (and a team of researchers) were able to source in a given year. Every review has four key criteria: nose, taste, finish and balance and each whisky is awarded marks out of 25, giving a total potential mark of 100 points. Since the release of Jim Murray's Whisky Bible, he has sold more than 750,000 copies of his many books in various languages across more than 30 countries.