Julian Hollick, who died at his home in France, 6 June, 2025, aged 77, was brother of the Duchess of Leinster.
Julian Bernard Hugh Crandall Hollick was born in 1947, son of Harry Bernard Hollick (1912-1985), and his wife the former Fiona F.M. Purcell (1917-2003), and was a brother of Fiona Mary Francesca Hollick (born 1953), wife since 1972, of the 9th Duke of Leinster (born 7 April, 1948).
Julian was an award-winning producer and writer of radio documentaries about Islam and Asia, including The World of Islam (1981-84), Passages to India (1985-89), Letters from Jitvapur (1991-92), Apna Street (1994-96), Monsoon (1997) and Sadak Chhap (2002). With over twenty years experience reporting on international affairs and producing radio for NPR and the BBC, he had previously been awarded numerous grants by the NEH, NSF, Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, Carnegie Corporation, the UNDP and the Massachusetts Cultural Council for his radio programs. ABC's Peter Jennings has called Julian "the person who taught me about Islam", and by countless Indians (at home and abroad) as "the man who knows more about India than we Indians." (Radio Midday, Mumbai)
"Time is perhaps the most important element in my programs. I try and live for months on end with the people whose stories I want to tell. And return again and again, deepening earlier friendships. The second ingredient is not to look at them through Western eyes. If you ask Western questions you'll get Western answers. Which may be comforting, but tell you absolutely nothing about another culture. And you have to want to know them, to care about them, and treat them as your equals."
Educated at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in France (where he also taught), and the London School of Economics (both in International Relations), he also lectured at the Open University and the University of Ulster, before becoming a print and then radio journalist. He wrote on European politics, Islam and India for newspapers, academic journals and magazines, including Smithsonian Magazine and Arabia, throughout the US, Europe, and the Asian and Arab worlds. He worked on a series about how Muslims in a variety of countries actually integrate their faith into their other identities. The series was called Living Islam and was broadcast nationally, starting in New York City, in Fall 2003.
He leaves a widow Martine (nee Crandall) and two children, a son Jerome Francis Crandall Hollick (born 1975), and Margot.
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