Christopher de Bellaigue

Christopher de Bellaigue (born 1971 in London) is a journalist who has worked on the Middle East and South Asia since 1994. His work mostly chronicles developments in Iran and Turkey.

Biography

De Bellaigue is from an Anglo-French background. He obtained a BA and MA in Oriental Studies from the University of Cambridge, where he was a student at Fitzwilliam College. His first book, In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran, was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize. In 2007-2008, he was a visiting fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford, where he began work on an anticipated biography of the Iranian prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh.

De Bellaigue is a frequent contributor to the The Guardian, New York Review of Books, Granta, and The New Yorker, among other publications. He was formerly the Tehran correspondent for The Economist. He lives in London with his wife Bita Ghezelayagh, who is an Iranian architect, and two children.

In 2012, de Bellaigue's book about Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mossadegh, Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragic Anglo-American Coup, was published.

Armenian Genocide denial

He wrote Rebel Land: Among Turkey's Forgotten People, an account of the three years he lived in Varto, after publishing an essay in the New York Review of Books about the "deportations and massacres" of Armenians in 1915. This was after he had been accused by Harvard Professor James R. Russell in engaging in Armenian Genocide denial and scolded by editor Robert Silvers for acting as an "apologist" for the Turks.

Books

• The Islamic Enlightenment: The Modern Struggle Between Faith and Reason (2017)
• Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragic Anglo-American Coup (2012)
• Rebel Land: Among Turkey's Forgotten People (2009)
• The Struggle for Iran (2007)
• In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran (2005)

Documentaries

• Iran and Britain (BBC Four, February 2009 [1])