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Christopher de Bellaigue
Christopher George Lowther de Bellaigue de Bughas (born 23 September 1971 in London) is a British author and journalist who is known for his long-form reporting and works of history.
De Bellaigue was formerly the correspondent for The Economist in Turkey and Iran. He also covered the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq for, among others, the New York Review of Books, Granta, The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and Harper’s Magazine.
Since returning to the UK in 2007, he has written several books and held fellowships at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and St Andrews. In 2024 he founded the Lake District Book Festival.
De Bellaigue is the second son of Sylvia Rodney (1930–1985), daughter of George Rodney, eighth Baron Rodney, and Lady Marjorie Lowther, daughter of the sixth Earl of Lonsdale, and of Eric de Bellaigue de Bughas, son of Vicomte Pierre de Bellaigue de Bughas, a decorated officer in the Free French Forces of General Charles de Gaulle, and Marie-Antoinette Willemin, who taught French and French literature to the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. His uncle, the art historian Sir Geoffrey de Bellaigue (1931–2013), was Director of the Royal Collection.
De Bellaigue attended Eton College from 1985 to 1989 and went on to read Hindi and Persian at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, graduating in 1995. In 2000, he married Bita Ghezelayagh, an Iranian artist and architect, in Tehran. They have two children.
After graduating, de Bellaigue moved to New Delhi where he worked as a staff writer for the news magazine India Today, going under cover for his first article to expose the illegal sale of Indian architectural artefacts to foreign collectors. In 1996 he became the Economist’s correspondent in Turkey and moved to Ankara. In 2000 de Bellaigue moved to Iran as the Economist’s correspondent, also covering the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and their aftermath. Dismayed by the Economist’s support for the invasion of Iraq, which he had opposed, in 2005 he quit the magazine and in 2007 he returned to the UK to take up the Alistair Horne Fellowship at St Antony’s College, Oxford, before moving to London in 2008.
De Bellaigue has continued to travel on journalistic assignments. In the summer of 2009 he was one of a small number of western journalists who reported from Iran for the duration of the Green Movement, in this case for the New Yorker, Harper’s and Prospect. In 2009 he made the television documentary Iran and Britain, a joint production by BBC Four and BBC Persian, and following the 2011 Arab Spring he made radio programmes for the BBC World Service from Egypt and Tunisia. In 2013 de Bellaigue’s Harper’s article on cockfighting in Afghanistan, Caliph of the Tricksters, was included in The Best American Travel Writing anthology. In 2015 his Guardian Long Read about being a tour guide in Iran, It’s Not Like Argo, won him a Foreign Press Association award. In 2019 the Guardian created a dedicated webpage for reader responses to his Long Read on assisted dying in the Netherlands, with four specialists in palliative care and intellectual disability declaring it to be ‘excellent’ while Molly Meacher, a crossbench peer in Britain’s House of Lords, accused de Bellaigue of ‘conflating’ euthanasia with suicide. De Bellaigue has reported at length on Turkish politics, the Kurdish cause, radicalisation inside French jails, rewilding, overtourism and the politics of Brazil, while continuing to review books on subjects ranging from climate change to Indian history for the New York Review of Books.
The second instalment of de Bellaigue’s trilogy about the Ottoman Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent appears on 6 March 2025 and takes the story from 1536 to 1553.
Christopher de Bellaigue
Christopher George Lowther de Bellaigue de Bughas (born 23 September 1971 in London) is a British author and journalist who is known for his long-form reporting and works of history.
De Bellaigue was formerly the correspondent for The Economist in Turkey and Iran. He also covered the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq for, among others, the New York Review of Books, Granta, The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and Harper’s Magazine.
Since returning to the UK in 2007, he has written several books and held fellowships at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and St Andrews. In 2024 he founded the Lake District Book Festival.
De Bellaigue is the second son of Sylvia Rodney (1930–1985), daughter of George Rodney, eighth Baron Rodney, and Lady Marjorie Lowther, daughter of the sixth Earl of Lonsdale, and of Eric de Bellaigue de Bughas, son of Vicomte Pierre de Bellaigue de Bughas, a decorated officer in the Free French Forces of General Charles de Gaulle, and Marie-Antoinette Willemin, who taught French and French literature to the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. His uncle, the art historian Sir Geoffrey de Bellaigue (1931–2013), was Director of the Royal Collection.
De Bellaigue attended Eton College from 1985 to 1989 and went on to read Hindi and Persian at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, graduating in 1995. In 2000, he married Bita Ghezelayagh, an Iranian artist and architect, in Tehran. They have two children.
After graduating, de Bellaigue moved to New Delhi where he worked as a staff writer for the news magazine India Today, going under cover for his first article to expose the illegal sale of Indian architectural artefacts to foreign collectors. In 1996 he became the Economist’s correspondent in Turkey and moved to Ankara. In 2000 de Bellaigue moved to Iran as the Economist’s correspondent, also covering the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and their aftermath. Dismayed by the Economist’s support for the invasion of Iraq, which he had opposed, in 2005 he quit the magazine and in 2007 he returned to the UK to take up the Alistair Horne Fellowship at St Antony’s College, Oxford, before moving to London in 2008.
De Bellaigue has continued to travel on journalistic assignments. In the summer of 2009 he was one of a small number of western journalists who reported from Iran for the duration of the Green Movement, in this case for the New Yorker, Harper’s and Prospect. In 2009 he made the television documentary Iran and Britain, a joint production by BBC Four and BBC Persian, and following the 2011 Arab Spring he made radio programmes for the BBC World Service from Egypt and Tunisia. In 2013 de Bellaigue’s Harper’s article on cockfighting in Afghanistan, Caliph of the Tricksters, was included in The Best American Travel Writing anthology. In 2015 his Guardian Long Read about being a tour guide in Iran, It’s Not Like Argo, won him a Foreign Press Association award. In 2019 the Guardian created a dedicated webpage for reader responses to his Long Read on assisted dying in the Netherlands, with four specialists in palliative care and intellectual disability declaring it to be ‘excellent’ while Molly Meacher, a crossbench peer in Britain’s House of Lords, accused de Bellaigue of ‘conflating’ euthanasia with suicide. De Bellaigue has reported at length on Turkish politics, the Kurdish cause, radicalisation inside French jails, rewilding, overtourism and the politics of Brazil, while continuing to review books on subjects ranging from climate change to Indian history for the New York Review of Books.
The second instalment of de Bellaigue’s trilogy about the Ottoman Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent appears on 6 March 2025 and takes the story from 1536 to 1553.