1. Stephen John Sackur was born on 9 January 1964 and is an English journalist who presented HARDtalk, a current affairs interview programme formerly on BBC World News and the BBC News Channel.
24 Facts About Stephen Sackur
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Stephen Sackur was the main Friday presenter of GMT on BBC World News.
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Stephen Sackur began working at the BBC as a trainee in 1986, and in 1990 he was appointed as one of its foreign affairs correspondents.
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Stephen Sackur was based in Cairo, Egypt, between 1992 and 1995 as the BBC's correspondent in the Middle East and he later moved to Jerusalem in 1995 until 1997.
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Stephen Sackur covered both the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the growth of the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat.
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Between 1997 and 2002, Stephen Sackur was appointed the BBC's correspondent in Washington, DC, and covered the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.
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Stephen Sackur later covered the US presidential election in 2000 and interviewed President George W Bush.
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In 2005, Stephen Sackur replaced Tim Sebastian as the regular host of the BBC's news programme HARDtalk.
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Stephen Sackur interviewed cultural figures including Gore Vidal, Annie Lennox, Charlize Theron, Vladimir Ashkenazy and William Shatner.
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Stephen Sackur was named "International TV Personality of the Year" by the Association for International Broadcasting in November 2010.
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Stephen Sackur was nominated as "Speech Broadcaster of the Year" at the Sony Radio Awards 2013.
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In July 2018, Stephen Sackur was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Warwick.
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Stephen Sackur has been a regular attendee and moderator at the Yalta European Strategy annual meetings founded and sponsored by Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk.
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The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention criticized Stephen Sackur for suggesting genocide as one of two "realistic options" for the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh during a HARDtalk interview with Ruben Vardanyan.
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Stephen Sackur had suggested the Armenians of the Republic of Artsakh either accept "a political deal or leave" due to the blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh.
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The Lemkin Institute further criticized Stephen Sackur for trying to suggest the word Artsakh was illegitimate and for ignoring the rights of self-determination.
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In March 2024, Stephen Sackur was widely criticized for tone and manner of questioning he adopted in an interview with Irfaan Ali, president of Guyana.
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Stephen Sackur asked Ali about the environmental impact of extracting Guyana's offshore oil and gas reserves and accused Guyana of worsening climate change through adding to global carbon emissions.
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Stephen Sackur attended two independent schools in Oundle and had a degree in agriculture from Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
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Stephen Sackur played rugby for Boston in the late 1950s.
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Robert Stephen Sackur joined the Labour Party in 1962, and with 23-year-old Stanley Henig unsuccessfully attempted to stand as a candidate in Lincolnshire at the 1964 general election.
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Stephen Sackur was eventually chosen in November 1965, aged 34, as the Labour candidate for Horncastle prior to the general election the following year, where he came second.
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Stephen Sackur's pro-Europeanism had first attracted him to becoming an MP, and he joined the SDP in 1982.
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Stephen Sackur was the first person representing a party to sit on the council.