Background
Mohammed Hassanein HEYKAL was born in Cairo, Egypt, he counted Abdel Nasser among his grandparents. His family were wealthy wheat merchants in the Nile delta. Mohamed the eldest son in his family was trained to manage the business.
(Book by Heikal, Mohamed)
Book by Heikal, Mohamed
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345253515/?tag=2022091-20
1976
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1982
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0552990981/?tag=2022091-20
1984
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1993
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0006383378/?tag=2022091-20
1997
economist journalist politician
Mohammed Hassanein HEYKAL was born in Cairo, Egypt, he counted Abdel Nasser among his grandparents. His family were wealthy wheat merchants in the Nile delta. Mohamed the eldest son in his family was trained to manage the business.
Educated at Cairo, graduating from the university with a diploma in economics and journalism.
During the Second World War, the graduate Heikal commenced a career in journalism at the British controlled and funded Egyptian Gazette, which he edited from 1943. The journal's contributors included English radical marxist writers George Orwell and Lawrence Durrell. Throughout his career he was a literary critic of Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak's military regimes, which he perceived as having departed from Nasser's original nationalist dream.His weekly column in “ Al-Aharam ”— compulsory reading, despite the verbosity, for anyone wanting to be well-informed— served as more than a mouthpiece of Nasser. It has been the channel for criticism which no other person could dare make publicly. Since Nasser’s death his influence has been substantially reduced but can be important on occasions. More criticised, he has become more tense, more vain and more right-wing.
He dates his start in journalism to February 8, 1942. He was a reporter with “Akher Saa” (Last Hour), an in-dependent weekly, and then political editor of “Akbar el Yom” (News of the Day). Immediately after the July 23, 1952, revolution he won the confidence of Nasser and was the ghost-writer for Nasser’s book “The Philosophy of the Revolution” published in 1954.
At “Al Ahram” (The Pyramids) he began excellent training schemes for journalists and technicians and he in-stalled the best equipment of any newspaper in the entire continent. Nasser used him as a mediator with Britain in 1959 when the memories of the Suez War were still vivid and in 1967 after the Six-Day War. He alone criticised the Arab Socialist Union after the June 1967 War. Students held a demonstration outside “Al Ahram" after the defeat in the Six-Day War, calling for Heykal’s resignation as if he were the government minister responsible. He steered clear of government responsibility except for a brief period when he was nominated Minister of National Guidance in April 1970.
After Nasser died on September 28, 1970, there were many attempts to silence and subdue Heykal or even have him removed from “Al Ahram”. But he continued to enjoy presidential protection from Sadat. He has been away from Cairo more often, travelling round the world. He was strongly criticised in the Egyptian Press in December 1972 for his attitude to “another round” with Israel and denounced for his anti-Russian views in the Soviet Press in March 1973.
(Book by Heikal, Mohamed)
1976He was married to Hedayt Elwi Taymour and they had 3 sons.
