Stephen Sackur is the presenter of HARDtalk, the current affairs interview programme broadcast on BBC World News and the BBC News Channel.

Stephen has been a journalist with BBC News since 1986 and prior to HARDtalk was the BBC's Europe Correspondent based in Brussels. In this role he travelled across Europe to cover major stories around the continent, including Europe's worst terror attack of recent times in Madrid in 2004, and the expansion of the European Union.

Before this, Stephen was the BBC's Washington Correspondent and has interviewed President George W Bush, covered the 2000 US Presidential Elections, the Clinton scandal and impeachment trial, and the ways and means of lawmaking, including campaign finance reform.

He also made a documentary for the BBC's flagship current affairs programme, Panorama, on the topic of guns and weapon manufacturer lawsuits in the US.

Stephen was also the BBC Middle East Correspondent in both Cairo (from 1992 to 1995) and Jerusalem (from 1995 to 1997), covering the peace process, the assassination of the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the emergence of the Palestinian Authority under the late Yasser Arafat.

To prepare a documentary on Islamic fundamentalism, he lived with Hezbollah guerrillas in south Lebanon for two weeks.

In 1990, Stephen was appointed as a BBC Foreign correspondent. He was part of the BBC's team covering the Gulf War, spending eight weeks with the British Army when the conflict began.

He was the first correspondent to break the story of the mass killing on the Basra road out of Kuwait City, marking the end of the war.

He wrote a book about his experiences - On The Basra Road - named as one of the Books of the Year by The Spectator magazine.

Stephen travelled back to Iraq just after the downfall of Saddam Hussein and filed the first television reports on the mass graves containing the bodies of thousands of victims of Saddam's regime.

In Eastern Europe as witness to Communism's last days, Stephen offered a unique perspective on the rocky road to democracy and stability for this area.

Serving as correspondent for BBC national radio, he reported on Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution and Germany's reunification.

Stephen has contributed countless articles to The Observer, The London Review of Books, The New Statesman and The Daily Telegraph.

Born in Lincolnshire, he was educated at both Cambridge and Harvard universities.