David Holden

His editor, Harold Evans, used three of his top journalists to conduct a six-month investigation, including several trips to the Middle East and one to the United States. The murder was never solved and no political group claimed responsibility. In Evans' autobiography, My Paper Chase (2009), he covered the murder of Holden and investigation.

"In 1988 the Sunday Times was told by a senior US diplomat in the Middle East that Holden had been killed on the orders of the CIA but it had been carried out by Egyptian agents." The question remains open as to why he was killed.

He began working on a third book, The House of Saud about the Saudi royal family, in 1976. Before he could finish it; he was killed. The book had to be completed later by two other Middle-Eastern specialists, Richard Johns and James Buchan, both then with the Financial Times.

Since 1971, Sadat had been reducing relations with the USSR and had closed the cultural centres of the Soviet Union, East Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. He called a conference to be convened at Mena House in Cairo from 14 December onward, for the meetings which would bring Israeli officials and their entourages, including security personnel, officially into an Arab country for the first time.

The Sunday Times editor, Harold Evans, sent three of his own reporters to investigate, and they worked on the case for six months. Based on several pieces of information, such as learning that the CIA had a file on Holden and about contacts of his with CIA agents, the journalists made an unconfirmed conclusion that he had been a CIA agent. They also noted that his reporting in the 1970s on CIA involvement in Cuba and Chile downplayed its role.

When the peace talks were announced, Holden came off a leave to attend them. He flew into Cairo several days earlier to cover the peace talks being initiated by Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president, with Israel. Since the Six-Day War in 1967 it had occupied the Egyptian province of Sinai. Sadat was acting independently from the rest of the Arab world.

In addition to his journalism, Holden wrote books: Farewell to Arabia (1966) and Greece Without Columns (1972).

As Middle East Correspondent for The Times, he travelled throughout the Arab World during the next four years, then was named roving correspondent. In 1961 he joined The Guardian with the same wide brief. In 1965 he became Chief Foreign Correspondent of The Sunday Times and was serving in that position at the time of his death.

The following year, Holden transferred to the Middle East to cover the political and diplomatic crisis following the 1956 joint invasion of Egypt by Israel, France, and Britain.

After a three-year stint as a schoolteacher in Scotland, Holden worked as a professional actor. He returned to North America, travelling as an odd-job man in the US and Mexico. In 1955, he was recruited as an assistant correspondent in Washington, DC by The Times (London).

David Holden (1924–1977) was a writer, journalist, and broadcaster, best known as the Chief Foreign Correspondent for The Sunday Times, specialising in Middle-Eastern affairs, where he had been since 1965. He was murdered in execution style in Cairo, Egypt.