12 Facts About Con Coughlin

Con Coughlin was born on 14 January 1955 and is a British journalist and author, currently The Daily Telegraph defence editor.

Con Coughlin read Modern History at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he specialised in the Industrial Revolution under the tutelage of the historian Simon Schama.

In November 1980 Con Coughlin joined The Daily Telegraph as a general news reporter.

Con Coughlin has spent most of his journalistic career working for what is the Telegraph Media Group.

Con Coughlin opened the newspaper's bureau in Jerusalem, and spent the next three years covering a multitude of stories throughout the region.

In March 2009 Con Coughlin recalled this experience in My Alter Ego, a programme for BBC Radio 4.

In 1989 Con Coughlin returned to London, where he transferred to The Sunday Telegraph and was appointed the newspaper's chief foreign correspondent.

Con Coughlin has appeared as a foreign-affairs analyst on the American networks CNN, Fox News, CBS, ABC and MSNBC and NBC.

In 2006 Con Coughlin rejoined The Daily Telegraph as the newspaper's defence and security editor after a brief spell writing for the Daily Mail, and later that year was promoted to the post of executive foreign editor.

Con Coughlin writes a weekly column, "Inside Abroad", and comments on a broad range of subjects, with a special interest in defence and security issues, the Middle East and international terrorism.

In 2009 Con Coughlin published Khomeini's Ghost a study of the life of Ayatollah Khomeini and his impact on the radicalisation of the Islamic world during the previous thirty years.

In late 2003, in a front-page exclusive story, Con Coughlin revealed a leaked intelligence memorandum, purportedly uncovered by Iraq's interim government, which detailed a meeting between Mohamed Atta, one of the 11 September hijackers, and Iraqi intelligence at the time of Saddam Hussein.