Stephen Sackur

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Stephen Sackur appearing on the Nine O'Clock News in 1996.

Stephen John Sackur (born January 9, 1964 in Spilsby in Lincolnshire) is a British journalist working for the BBC. He is the regular presenter of HARDtalk, the current affairs interview programme on BBC World and BBC News 24.

[edit] Biography

Stephen Sackur began his career in 1986 as a trainee at the BBC. In 1990 he was appointed the BBC's foreign affairs correspondent. He was part of the BBC's team of correspondents covering the Gulf War and spent eight weeks with the British army when the conflict began. Stephen was also the first correspondent to break the story of the mass killing on the Basra road out of Kuwait City which marked the end of the war.

During his tenure as a correspondent for BBC Radio, Sackur witnessed the last days of Soviet rule in Eastern Europe. He covered the Velvet Revolution of Czechoslovakia and the re-unification of Germany.

In 1992 Stephen became the BBC's Middle East correspondent and moved to Cairo. In 1995 he relocated to Jerusalem where he reported on the death of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the rise of the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat.

Sackur lived with Hezbollah guerrillas in South Lebanon for two weeks while making a documentary about Islamic fundamentalism.

From 1997 to 2002, he was the BBC's Washington correspondent. He reported a number of landmark stories including the investigation and impreachment trial of US President Bill Clinton. He also covered the 2000 US presidential election. He has conducted one-on-one interviews with US Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush respectively.

Sackur returned to Iraq in 2003 after Saddam Hussein was overthrown. He filed the first television pictures of the mass graves in Iraq, in which thousands of victims were buried.

In 2004, Sackur replaced veteran journalist Tim Sebastian as the regular host of BBC's hardhitting news program HARDtalk, where he interviews some of the foremost social and political actors in the world, including French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, OPEC Secretary-General Dr Adnan Shihab-Eldin, European Commission Vice President Gunter Verheugen, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres, the President of Iraq Jalal Talabani, environmentalist and UK Conservative Party advisor Zac Goldsmith, and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

[edit] Personal life

Born in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, he was educated at the King Edward VI Grammar School for Boys. He went on to earn his bachelors degree at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University and took his master's degree at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Since 1991, he has been married to Zina. They have three children.