“The Future of Syria”

Patrick Seale
Journalist, Author and Consultant, London, U.K.


Part of the Leadership & Political Change in the Middle East Seminar Series

Patrick Seale is a British journalist, author and consultant, with a special interest in Middle East affairs.

He was born in Belfast, N. Ireland, on May 7, 1930, and was educated at Balliol College and St. Antony’s College Oxford, where he was awarded a B.A., M.A. and D. Litt., and elected a senior associate member. He has worked as a foreign correspondent in many parts of the world for Reuters and for the British Sunday newspaper, The Observer, and for some fifteen years ran his own literary agency and art gallery in London. He writes syndicated columns for several newspapers.

His books include: The Struggle for Syria (OUP, 1965 and Yale University Press, 1986) ; French Revolution 1968 (Penguin, Putnam, etc., 1968) ; The Hilton Assignment (Temple Smith, 1973, and Fontana); Philby, the Long Road to Moscow (Hamish Hamilton and Simon and Schuster, 1973); Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East (I B Tauris, 1988 and California University Press, 1989); Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire (Random House, 1992). He helped HRH Prince General Khaled bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz, now Assistant Defense Minister of Saudi Arabia, write Desert Warrior, a memoir of the first Gulf War, Harper Collins, 1995, and several foreign language editions. His latest book, The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press 2010; also French and Arabic editions) won the 2010 award of the British Society for Middle East Studies (BRISMES).

He lives in London and the South of France.


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