Edward Behr (journalist)
Edward Behr | |
---|---|
Born | Edward Samuel Behr 7 May 1926 Paris, France |
Died | 27 May 2007 Paris, France | (aged 81)
Education | Foreign correspondent, journalist |
Spouse | Christiane Behr |
Military career | |
Allegiance | British Empire |
Branch | British Indian Army |
Years of service | 1944 | – 1948
Rank | Brigade major (acting) |
Unit | Royal Garhwal Rifles |
Deployment | North-West Frontier |
Edward Samuel Behr (7 May 1926 in
News reports of his death confused him with the food writer of the same name.[1]
Biography
His parents were of Russian-Jewish descent, and he had a bilingual education at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly and St Paul's School, London. He enlisted in the British Indian Army on leaving school, serving in Intelligence in the North-West Frontier from 1944 to 1948 and rising to acting brigade major in the Royal Garhwal Rifles at the age of 22. He then took a degree in history at Magdalene College, Cambridge.
Behr is survived by his wife, Christiane.
Career
Reporting
His early career as a reporter was with
Behr was often in Algeria, and in 1958 published The Algerian Problem. The book had the virtue of being written by a French-speaking outsider with some understanding of, and sympathy for, the positions of both the French and the Algerians. Written when the war was far from over, and going back a century or more over the background, it was considered a fair assessment of a problem which many Frenchmen reckoned no foreigner could possibly understand. The book was said to be compulsory reading at the United States Department of State.
Returning to
Operating from
when it was occupied by the Russians.Biographies and television
Behr turned gradually from a career in war reporting to writing books and making television documentaries, including award-winning programmes on India, Ireland and the Kennedy family. A notable production was The American Way of Death, Behr's look at America's undertaking industry.
Later came a documentary for
In his book
In his book on the
In 1987 Behr wrote a biography of
In 1978 he published his memoirs. Memorably entitled Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English?, it was retitled more blandly for the American market as Bearings: A Foreign Correspondent's Life Behind the Lines.[2][3]
In a thriller, Getting Even (1981), Behr used his foreign correspondent experience. He was the author (with Sydney Liu) of The Thirty-Sixth Way: A Personal Account of Imprisonment and Escape from Red China (1969), wrote a book on the musical Les Misèrables and collaborated on another about the making of Miss Saigon.
He also wrote Thank Heaven for Little Girls: The True Story of Maurice Chevalier's Life and Times (1993). He contributed regularly to American, French and British periodicals.
References
- ^ "Prolific British writer Behr dies at 81". Archived from the original on 22 March 2020. Retrieved 14 January 2017. [dead link]
- ^ "Edward Behr, 81, foreign correspondent and writer, dies". International Herald Tribune. 30 May 2007. Archived from the original on 10 October 2007.
- ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 19 September 2020.