Karl Sabbagh is a British writer, journalist, television producer, and convicted sex offender.
His work is mainly non-fiction: he has written books about historical events and produced
documentaries
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in term ...
for both British and
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
broadcasters.
Biography
Karl Sabbagh was born in
Evesham
Evesham () is a market town and parish in the Wychavon district of Worcestershire, in the West Midlands region of England. It is located roughly equidistant between Worcester, Cheltenham and Stratford-upon-Avon. It lies within the Vale of Evesha ...
,
Worcestershire
Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see His ...
, England in the March quarter of 1942.
His father was the
Palestinian Christian
Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...
broadcaster , at the time working for the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...
Arabic Service; his mother, born Pamela Graydon, was English, of American and Irish parentage. His parents divorced soon after he was born and his father later lived in the United States, but Karl (originally named Khalil after his grandfather) remained in England with his mother.
He was the producer of the
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures are a series of lectures on a single topic each, which have been held at the Royal Institution in London each year since 1825, missing 1939–1942 because of the Second World War. The lectures present sci ...
, ‘The natural history of a sunbeam’, by
George Porter
George Porter, Baron Porter of Luddenham (6 December 1920 – 31 August 2002) was a British chemist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1967.
Education and early life
Porter was born in Stainforth, near Thorne, in the then West ...
, in 1976 and ‘The planets’, by
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan (; ; November 9, 1934December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on ext ...
, in 1977.
Sabbagh's book ''Palestine'' (2006) interweaves a history of Palestine from the 18th century with an account of his paternal family, who were prominent Christian members of Palestinian society in
Galilee
Galilee (; he, הַגָּלִיל, hagGālīl; ar, الجليل, al-jalīl) is a region located in northern Israel and southern Lebanon. Galilee traditionally refers to the mountainous part, divided into Upper Galilee (, ; , ) and Lower Galil ...
throughout that period, settled in the town of
Safad
Safed (known in Hebrew as Tzfat; Sephardic Hebrew & Modern Hebrew: צְפַת ''Tsfat'', Ashkenazi Hebrew: ''Tzfas'', Biblical Hebrew: ''Ṣǝp̄aṯ''; ar, صفد, ''Ṣafad''), is a city in the Northern District of Israel. Located at an elevat ...
from at least the beginning of the 19th century. The book includes a critical account of the
Zionist
Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after ''Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...
settlement and eventual takeover of Palestine in the first half of the 20th century.
Personal life
He is married to Sue Heber Percy and they have four children.
In September 2019 Sabbagh was jailed for 45 months and put on the sex-offenders register for life after being convicted of grooming a 14-year-old girl.
Bibliography
*''The Living Body'' (1984; with
Christiaan Barnard
Christiaan Neethling Barnard (8 November 1922 – 2 September 2001) was a South African cardiac surgeon who performed the world's first human-to-human heart transplant operation. On 3 December 1967, Barnard transplanted the heart of accident-v ...
).
*''Skyscraper: The Making of a Building '' (1989) (the story of the building of
One Worldwide Plaza
One Worldwide Plaza is the largest tower of Worldwide Plaza, a three-building commercial and residential complex in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), One ...
)
*''Magic or Medicine?: An Investigation of Healing & Healers'' (1993; with
Rob Buckman
Robert Alexander Amiel Buckman (22 August 1948 – 9 October 2011) was a British doctor of medicine, comedian and author, and president of the Humanist Association of Canada. He first appeared in a Cambridge University Footlights Revue in 1968, ...
) (an investigation of
alternative medicine
Alternative medicine is any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine despite lacking biological plausibility, testability, repeatability, or evidence from clinical trials. Complementary medicine (CM), complementary and alt ...
)
*''Twenty-First-Century Jet: The Making and Marketing of the Boeing 777'' (1996)
*''A Rum Affair: A True Story Of Botanical Fraud'' (1999) (about the botanical fraud perpetrated by
John William Heslop-Harrison)
*''Power into Art'' (2000) (the story of the redevelopment of
Bankside power station
Bankside Power Station is a decommissioned electricity generating station located on the south bank of the River Thames, in the Bankside area of the Borough of Southwark, London. It generated electricity from 1891 to 1981. It was also used as ...
as
Tate Modern
Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is ...
)
* '' Dr. Riemann's Zeros: The Search for the $1 Million Solution to the Greatest Problem in Mathematics'' (2002)
''The Riemann Hypothesis: The Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics'', 1st American edition (2003)ref> (about the
Riemann Hypothesis
In mathematics, the Riemann hypothesis is the conjecture that the Riemann zeta function has its zeros only at the negative even integers and complex numbers with real part . Many consider it to be the most important unsolved problem in ...
)
*''Palestine: A Personal History'' (2006)
*''Your Case is Hopeless: Bracing Advice From the Boy's Own Paper'' (2007)
*''Remembering our Childhood: How Memory Betrays Us'' (2009)
*''The Hair of the Dog and Other Scientific Surprises'' (2009)
*''The Trials of Lady Jane Douglas'' (2014)
*''Antisemitism Wars: How the British Media Failed Their Public'' (2018)
See also
*
Palestinian Christians
Palestinian Christians ( ar, مَسِيحِيُّون فِلَسْطِينِيُّون, Masīḥiyyūn Filasṭīniyyūn) are Christian citizens of the State of Palestine. In the wider definition of Palestinian Christians, including the Palestin ...
References
External links
*Bibliographical information from th
British Library Cataloguean
Library of Congress Catalog
1940s births
Living people
British non-fiction writers
People from Evesham
British male writers
English people of Palestinian descent
Male non-fiction writers
Writers from Worcestershire
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