Cartoonist Naji al-Ali

Great Lives

BBC

Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2026

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Naji al-Ali was one of the best known cartoonists in the Arab world. His creation, a little boy called Handala, always stands with his back to the viewer, hands behind his back, watching whatever Naji al-Ali has drawn. He's been picked by the Pulitzer prize winning data journalist Mona Chalabi - but is she picking the artist, or his creation, the observant little boy?

Joining Mona in studio to discuss a life that was cut short is the cartoonist Martin Rowson. Naji al-Ali was assassinated in London in 1987 at just fifty years of age. The case remains unresolved. A powerful programme that includes the voice of Naji al-Ali's son plus news archive from 1987 and 2017, the thirtieth anniversary of his death.

The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:07.2	Things just swirling around my head.
0:09.6	Am I really the product of this?
0:12.1	Astonishing secrets uncovered by at-home DNA tests.
0:17.0	Little did I know what more was to come.
0:19.5	I'm Jenny Clemen, and in the new series of The Gift, we'll hear more stories emerging
0:25.2	out of the ever-expanding global DNA database.
0:28.8	They did know that I was different.
0:31.7	You had kids together.
0:33.0	Yeah.
0:33.5	Then you met.
0:34.3	Then we met.
0:35.2	The Gift.
0:36.1	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:39.3	Today's guest is an illustrator and a data journalist, skills that she's combined so successfully that she won the Pulitzer Prize.
0:48.2	That was for a New York Times magazine piece called Nine Ways to Imagine Jeff Bezos's Wealth.
0:55.1	The mind boggles, but Jeff is not our great life today.
0:58.9	Welcome Mona Chilabi to our show.
1:01.5	Whom have you picked and why?
1:03.6	I have picked Najee Al-Ali, a great, great, great artist.
1:07.2	Can you remember when you first became aware of his work?
1:10.7	I think I was 20 or 21 and I saw a
	...

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